Top Tech Fails 2012
Any product or service from techn company may result in failure, even like Google or Apple such giants also have to face the harsh reality. We summarize the "died" technologies, concepts and products in 2012. Part of those failure products and services from Google, Apple. However, there are more survivals in their product/service lists so they can continue to develop new technologies.
Cisco Tablet PC for Enterprise user – Cius
Cisco closed Cius project in June of this year. Cius is a business tablet PC with Android OS. The Cius life cycle is actually less than one year from the first shipment in to market.
While iPad is dominating the world, the Cisco Cius just want to share a small part of business tablet space, however it's failed. John Chambers, CEO of Cisco said the Cius project should have been closed 9 months before.
Ping, MobileMe and iWork sharing
Even companies like Apple can not guarantee all their products can be accepted by the market. On Sep 30th 2012, Apple closed Ping which is introduced into the iTunes music network in 2010. Although there're some supporters of Ping, it's lack of integration with other popular sites.
MobileMe mainly offers cloud network service to mobile devices like backup etc. However, with the increasing user requirements , it led to a more mature product – iCloud. After that, Apple group encourages people to migrate to iCloud and finally closed MobileMe on Jul 1st this year.
iWork sharing service is the same as MobileMe, people need to migrate all data to iCloud.
Motorola Webtop
Webtop is a software designed for Motorola smart phones. It's able to convert smart phone to a special table PC accessory and doing the pc work like web browsing. At the very first of Webtop, people in the industry believe it will be the future of mobile computing.
Unfortunetely, Webtop does not receive positive feedbacks and selling is not very good. As the Android developed more similar service, webtop is being igored by mor and more people.. After merged to Google, Motorola pays further attention to Android OS improvement especially the desktoplike function development. The new Adroid phones will no longer include Webtop.
Google Postini
Google is ready to shut Postini – their spam filtering and email archiving product. Meanwhile, google intends to move all Postini users to Google Apps before 2013. Google has added the Postini security features to Google Apps. Comparing to Postini, Google Apps is a larger, more reliable platform.
iDen network of Sprint
US mobile communications Corp Sprint plans to shut down iDEN Network in June 2013. In 2005, CDMA tech based Sprint acquired Nextel with big money and got the IDEN technology. But later it approves it is a failure attempt. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced to allow Sprint iDEN band for 4G services.
Microsoft Windows Live
The Microsoft Windows Live is now "dead"! Microsoft launched the service in 2005, but now it's planned to close. In fact, the closure of Windows Live started from 2008. The core service "search" and "Email" have been transferred to Bing and Hotmail. In 2008, Microsoft Windows Live Book Search function and help the community got closed, Windows Live Spaces was shut down in 2010 and Windows Live Group discussion closed in September 2012.
MSNBC from Microsoft and NBC Universal
In July of this year, Microsoft and NBC Universal announced to end the 16 years partnership in msnbc.com/MSNBC cable TV. As a result of that, the Microsoft first try in traditional television media gone to the end. NBC workers have moved from Microsoft headquarters in Redmond to NBC headquarter in New York. MSNBC will be renamed to NBC.
Microsoft will focus on MSN.com online customer. With their advanced technology, users will be able to read the breaking news in real time.
SOPA bill
SOPA is short of Stop Online Piracy Act. It's firstly announced on Oct 26th 2011 by Lamar Smith. Because it will affect the internet freedom as well as user privacy, it's opposed by almost every internet giants including Google、Yahoo、Facebook、Twitter、AOL、LinkedIn、eBay、Mozilla、Roblox and many human rights associations. On Jan 14th 2012, Obama officially announced not to support SOPA bill.
Juniper’s Peribit WAN optimization
Juniper announced in August to co-operate with Riverbed company who is competitor in WAN Optimization. That means the $337 million acquisition over Peribit Networks in 2005 to develop their own products completely failed. The cooperation between Juniper and Riverbed can improve both performance and security across different devices, network and cloud application delivery.
Cooperation between Sprint and LightSquared
Cooperation agreement between U.S. telecom operator Sprint and LightSquared was terminated on March 16 2012. Under the agreement, Sprint will return LightSquared pre-payment of $65 million which is paid in 2011. Sprint and LightSquared signed a 15-year-long cooperation agreement, there LightSquared will pay Sprint $9 billion in the first 11 years in spectrum, network services, LTE and satellite purchasing. Another $4.5 billion payment will authorize LightSquared to offer 4G service. However, the plan was rejected by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rejected because it will obstruct the airline and military GPS system. Soon after that LightSquared encountered $56 millions of the debt crisis, to reduce operating costs the company was forced massive layoffs, the company CEO resigned because of this.
Naked DSL projects by Verizon
In May of this year, the U.S. mobile operator Verizon stopped "naked DSL" business. Verizon explained only around 10% DSL users signed the service. Since from May 6, clients will not be able to sign up this service but it will remain for existing users.
Megaupload website
The famous file sharing site Megaupload was shut down by the U.S. Justice department in January this year. The site owner is also arrested by U.S goverment for international piracy. This event resulted in lots of attacking to U.S goverment and other big websites. Megaupload headquarter is located in Hong Kong, and it's founder Kim Dotcom was arrested in New Zealand.
Microsoft Metro
August this year, Microsoft determined to give up the word "Metro" in Win8 and Windows Phone system due to the METRO brand trademark disputes. MS does not explain about the dispute but call it internal study code in early days.
Google Picnik
Picnik is online photo editing and sharing website which is acquired by Google in 2010. On April 19 2012, Google shut down Picnik and migrated some popularly used tools and functions to Google+ Creative Kit. Google enterprise management department vice president Dave Girouard said, google hopes to improve the quality of service and offer better user experience.
Adobe does not support Android 4.1 and further versions
Adobe announced in June said Flash Player will only support Google android system till version 4.0. 4.1 and further versions are not compatible. After Aug 15th 2012, the program will not be available from Google Play online store, only previously installed equipment can continue to download. However, Adobe will provide document files on their official site to users or developers to download.
Microsoft MIX conference
Microsoft held MIX conference for developers and designers since from 2005, but Microsoft did not as usual this year. Microsoft has determined to merge it into the BUILD conference held in October. Microsoft said in 2005 IE6 was being developed, Microsoft needs developers gathered together to fix problems, but now the situation has changed, and there's overlap between MIX and BUILD, it's not good to invite developers to participate two similar Conference.
Oink
Oink is the first product by Digg founder Kevin Roseafter leaving Digg. Oink is a mobile application that allows users to scoring in different places for anything and share with your followers. We can also find the best stuff in a city or a specific location by Oink. However, only afeter four months in the Apple store, he decided to use the limited resources to other projects and Oink closed on March 15 of the year. BTW, there're over 100,000 downloads when Oink just came out for 3 weeks and the lab Milk also received a $1.5 million investment from Google Ventures.
Harris remote cloud hosting service
Military radio equipment manufacturer Harris Corp. announced to close remote cloud hosting service business in February due to low rate user adoption. As international communications and IT service provider, Harris set up a 10-million-square-foot data center in Virginia last year. Now Harris has to close the remote cloud hosting service and sell it's data center.
Amazon Kindle DX
Amazon e-book reader Kindle DX officially released on May 6, 2009. In November of last year, Amazon suddenly cut down Kindle DX price from $379 to $259 on official site, the downgrade is up to 32%. Now DX is not available on Amazon site for no reason. From all online analysis, Kindle DX is a failure because just in September of this year, Amazon launched a new e-reader — 6-inch size Paperwhite. If the user need bigger size, Amazon also introduced a 8.9-inch size tablet pc Kindle Fire HD.