12 Biggest Missed Opportunities In Tech

Bangalore: Stories of “rags to riches and beyond” are not rare in tech world, be it a company started in garage turning in to Cupertino giant or a Harvard dropout building a biggest social networking site. These stories invoke a sense of inspiration and amazement.

Imagine the other way, where a successful company fails to hold on to its glory, andthrown out, which could have otherwise been in a league of biggest tech names today. That seems like a biggest opportunity missed. Read on to know 12 such compilations.

#12 Motorola

What It Had: The potential. Razr, launched in 2004, was success and sold about 50 million units by 2006, it was the first thinnest Phone; made other manufacturers to follow example.

The things which were cherished at a moment may miss the same charm with changing times. Motorola did not understand this fact or were ok with their innocence. When Apple was unveiling blockbuster phones, Moto yet hung on to Razr and Krzrs, and missed on to the innovations which could have saved the company. The user interface and software didn’t seem to matter at all.

Moto came up with MotoQ, which had windows OS. But it was too late; it only flickered for a while. By the time they tried to do anything good by themselves, the company was under Google. Moto indeed had a big fall.

#11 AOL

What it had: When people were sorted up with CDs and TV for entertainment-- AOL brought in the change. It owned the ISP business, beating its peers, introduced millions of people to internet and chat-rooms, new experience unveiled.

What it missed: the company seemed to be more interested in sales than in growth. It offered pay per hour internet which was a norm at the time; got many ads. The company gained huge profits. The fall was hard, in 1997, as per the reports, 60.3 percent of AOL connections were dead, mostly due to busy signal. This episode was a late night comedy feed. When world moved from dial up to broad band, AOL missed the train. The customers now are addicted with greater data speeds and calls AOL as old school.

#10 Friendster

What it had: A social networking site that started when Facebook was a far cry. Had no strong peers for competition, could have achieved unlimited success.

What it missed: Friendster is still popular in Philippines, but that’s not a respite. The success scored by a late starter like Zuckerbergwith Facebook could be a matter of envy to friendster. Back in 2002, when it was started it had all the basic elements of a social networking site—be it friending, or writing on wall (called as “leaving testimony”). The site’s popularity grew, which was a matter of joy; but the team failed to manage traffic, so the site crashed, or hung, just behaved oddly. No surprise, the popularity was lost with same speed.

#9 Blockbuster

What it had: All the resources, and was launched at a time people were very much in to renting movies for home viewing.

What it missed: when market was ready for them, even with their resources they fumble to deliver services. For people who wanted to rent a movie, the only option was Blockbuster. The movie rental company turned blind to this opportunity, the customers were vexed by crappy movie collections, and their inability to keep the movies in stock, resulted in long waiting. So it was obvious that customers hated Blockbuster.

Even when challenge came from a nascent peer, Netflix, the company some how deluded into believing it has got strong base of customers. Meanwhile Netflix turned into primary choice for movie rentals, focusing well in all areas Blockbuster missed. An attempt by the company to improve by copying Netflix model was unsuccessful. It’s obvious, the company was sent to oblivion.

#8 MySpace

What it had: While people were grappling with slow Friendster, the one thing they cared about was speed, and MySpace had it. It had no parallels in social networking space, the speed and a glimpse of friends on the site was thing of the day.

What it missed: The moral of the fable—tortoise and hare fails here, MySpace was taking its own sweet time for innovations and in a jiffy the social networking space got hijacked by Facebook.

The site was chaotic and narrow. The auto loaded high metal songs and weird gif background, which was ok with youngsters, failed to include greater bandwidth of users. And after a while even youngsters seemed to love social networking sites which had essence of suburbs. It is ironic that the site was acquired by News Corp. for a whopping $580 million in 2005, and did nothing to improve it. Overall MySpace was a flop show.

#7 Microsoft

What it had: First to rule tablet market.

What it missed: the company was the first to invent modern tablet PC. Though it wasa bit ahead of it’s time, the cheap capacitive display, which made users to ditch the stylus, and mobile OS rather than fully blown windows OS would have done justice to tablet, the result—masses took it to be weird gadget.

After nearly a decade, the company is now reinventing itself, with range of ‘surface’ branded tablets. No matter they have started it, but are just competing with Apple iPads now.

#6 AT&T

What it had: For many years, a network provider for Apple gadgets.

What it missed: Providing network service to the most desirable gadgets in the world could be a coveting aspect for network providers. AT & T was not serious about the opportunity as service providers for Apple. It failed heavily in voice and data networks in major cities, put its self up for mockery thereby drove Apple to opt for other network providers. The big deal lost even without putting an effort to hold it.

#5 Sony

What it had: Ruled the roost in the world of portable music.

What it missed: in 80s Sony invented thewalkman, the toast of music lovers, and company’s inroads in to portable music. The company brought out the Discman, the first portable CD player, and thought obvious that the company will pull off the digital music players too, which did not happen. The company’s devotion to file format hindered the possibility of digital music players for MP3 format for many years. Early products from Sony made users to use messy software to turn digital data to file format, which seemed so retro even at that time. People just got migrated to portable audio players compatible with digital formats, instead going on with tedious job of converting data for different formats. If the company kept up, only iPod wouldn’t have been called awesome.

#4 Palm

What it had: First to come up with netbooks.

What it missed: Announced in 2007,Palm’s Foleo was the first netbook to be introduced. It was something between Smartphone and laptop, size you can carry anywhere, good battery life, and low price tag. It is all awesome, but the dismay by public towards the product at first glance, which was more of bewilderment than actual dismay, made company to retrieve itself in to the shell. If only it stuck on, the big was waiting just around the corner. Just after a month, Asus brought up Eee PC, a netbook based on blueprints of Palm’s Foleo, a big success.

#3 Yahoo

What it had: Lots of potential to hit it big.

What it missed: it includes so many could’s—yahoo could have gone for big-time acquisitions such as Flickr and del.icio.us or may be Facebook( too big now). It could have simply gave into Microsoft’s proposal to acquire it, for a sum worth more than the company’s present value or simply did not messed up in hiring a CEO who lied about computer science degree. Too many follies has made company creeping out for stability.

#2 Digg

Had: There was no bigger satisfaction than finding yours story pop up on the first page of Digg in the year 2008.

Missed: there was a time when some media houses designed the news just to suit it for front page of Digg. Just a wrong redesign, to turn the company more towards MySpace and Reddit , made the Digg v4 documented in history for the worst redesign, which had lost all the glitz and glamour of its predecessor.

#1 RIM/Blackberry

What it had: A few years ago Blackberry was the most popular smart phone which offered a great web experience.

What it missed: Latest market figures shows that, RIM is loosing its position in Smartphone arena. It holds only 6.4 percent of the global Smartphone market, which means around 29 percent fall in sales of Blackberry in just one year. Well Android and iOS are present world leaders in Smartphone segment.

Blackberries fall seems quite sudden, and sometimes one may feel company is not putting enough in to the fight.