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Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

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Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#71

Post by taneq »

gtf21 wrote: post #58

Pebble smart-watches. I had them from the original kickstarter, and eventually had a Pebble Time Round which I loved. Whilst I now would never buy a smartwatch, I think that theirs were by far the best. Slimline, with a great UI, and nice functionality, and also not locked into either mobile ecosystem. I'm not entirely sure what caused their death, but my personal view is that they tried to become too big, and I don'…

> my personal view is that they tried to become too big, and I don't think the wearables market is really that valuable

I think you're spot on here. They had a perfectly viable 20-30 person company going in a nice stable little niche, and then the smartwatch hype cycle reached its peak and VCs threw a ton of cash at them along with a mandate to become the Next Big Thing. And so they hired way too many new people, churned out too many new models, and collapsed when the market just wasn't there.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#74

Post by Someone1234 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #27
belltaco wrote: post #16

Windows Phone Zune

I still don't understand how MS managed to mess up Windows Phone. My girlfriend had one for a while and it was excellent.

Google's monopolistic abuse is a very under-reported part of this story.

No Google app suite, which Google is absolutely allowed not to make. So Microsoft made the apps for free for Google, google said no, then Microsoft released their own brand clients (e.g. Microsoft YouTube client, Maps, etc) and Google shut it down with lawyers.

Can any platform survive without Google ecosystem support? If Windows Phone was the case study then likely not.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#76

Post by toomanyrichies »

ryeon wrote: post #61

turntable.fm was super fun! wish they had something like this now.

I came here to say this. I and multiple friends were active users and mourned its demise.

Wondering whether it was due to lack of demand or operational issues. If it was the latter, that implies the concept might in fact work under a stronger team (or one with deeper pockets).

I’d love to see a company like Spotify try to resurrect it. Or even (shudder) Apple. On the one hand, it’d be a drag to have such a lovely service owned by a corporate behemoth. On the other hand, any losses would basically be couch money for them, and I’d be kinda OK with them mining my music data in exchange.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#78

Post by oblomovshchina »

freehunter wrote: post #64

Microsoft Courier. A dual-screen tablet that was basically OneNote in hardware form.

That was exclusively Ballmer's fault for axing it iirc. The ideas for the device were amazing. It could have captured a lot of that creative market that Apple owns now. Tragic, really.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#79

Post by colechristensen »

Switch light bulbs.

Beautiful design, great natural light color, engineered to dissipate heat very well (and thus last a long time), they got on the cover of Wired.

However they overdid the packaging and had a hard times convincing people to buy $60 light bulbs and only sold in strange stores.

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