Top 10 Tech Fails - Telstra Media
With Blackberry announcing that it will no longer manufacture smartphones we decided to compile the top ten biggest tech fails.
1. iSmell
Developed by Digiscents in 2001. The iSmell Personal Scent Synthesiser was an external computer device that connected to your computer via the USB port and was designed to release a smell when a user visited a website or opened an email. The device contained a cartridge with 128 primary odours which could be mixed to create natural and man-made odours.
2. Nokia N-Gage
Released by Nokia in 2003 the N-Gage, a pun on engage, was developed to compete against and draw gamers away from the Game Boy Advance by introducing mobile phone functionality. It was mocked with the nickname Taco Phone and was unsuccessful because the buttons weren’t really suited to gaming.
3. :CueCat
Released in 2000, :CueCat was a plastic cat shaped infrared sensor barcode scanner. Millions were shipped for free across the US in the hope that people would use them to scan special bar codes in magazines and catalogues that directed you to unique URL’s.
4. Atari Lynx
Designed to take on handheld gaming giant Nintendo’s Game Boy, this 8-bit gaming console was released in 1990 and was the world’s first handheld electronic game with a full colour backlit LCD screen. The TV ad featured a young Tobey Maguire playing with the console on the toilet. Atari probably should have taken this as an omen because as history tells us the Game Boy was a market leader smashing it’s competition in the 90’s and early 2000’s.
5. Playstation EyeToy
Manufactured by Logitech, it was released in 2003 and was essentially a webcam that allowed gamers to use gesture recognition to interact in the gaming environment. It never really took off and as you can see from the commercial who wants to flail around their lounge room acting like you’ve just walked through a spiders web?
6. Motorola ROKR
Before the iPhone there was the Motorola ROKR E1. A pun on rocker it was the first phone to contain iTunes and boasted a 100 song capacity which became one of its downfalls. Its lack of success was also due to the painfully slow song upload times.
7. Oakley Thump Sunglasses
These sunglasses were released in 2004 and were the first to contain an MP3 player. It could store 64 songs and featured flip-up lenses for indoor use. Its $300 price range contributed to poor sales.
8. Nintendo Virtual Boy
Released in 1995, the Virtual Boy was one of the first virtual gaming consoles and was designed to use sitting at a table or standing wearing a harness. It proved to be a commercial failure because of its high price and discomfort, dizziness, nausea and headaches while playing due to its red monochromatic display.
9. Siemens Xelibri 6
How do you market a phone for women? Siemens thought that it was by copying Thunderbirds Lady Penelope’s compact phone. It was marketed as a fashion accessory and sold with a very high price tag.
10. MiniDisc
Sony released the MiniDisc in 1992 to replace cassette tapes and compact disks. The selling point was portability and the ease of re-recording over one disc (something that couldn’t be done with CDs). The high price tag ($750) for MiniDisc players meant that it never made an impression on a mainstream music audience. People stuck with cassettes for recording and the Discman for portability. It was eventually killed off by the iPod and Mp3 players.
