The brainchild of budding entrepreneurs and research labs, these tech failures were intended to become commonplace in our fast-changing world.
Unfortunately, they turned into Frankensteins that no one wanted – mostly for scientific reasons, technical dependencies, or a poorly conceived business model.
Without further ado, let's get stuck in...
1. Mobile video chat
In the UK and US, video chat over a smartphone is still a distant dream. Part of the problem is bandwidth – there just isn't enough of it for two-way video. Part of the issue is ease of use: it should be as quick to place a video call as one where you only use your voice.
"Vendors didn't realise that the problems were more behavioural than technical and didn't approach the market properly," says tech analysts Enderle. Maybe Apple can turn this one around?
2. Quadraphonic sound
Another technology that never had a chance, quadraphonic sound put four channels of audio in four corners of the room, and it emerged in the 1970s as a way to emulate what you hear in a cinema or live performance.
The main issue had to do with a lack of standardised formats, and the emergence of Dolby and DTS surround sound – which were heavily supported by the audio industry.
3. Intel Viiv
A high-profile flop, Intel Viiv was the big announcement at CES in 2006. It was essentially the "Centrino of home media distribution" - chipsets and components designed to make it easier to store and retrieve digital media including music, movies, and photos. But it just didn't work.
The plan was for PC makers to proudly display the Viiv logo, but the failure was not in communicating the value of digital media – we'd already got that - Viiv was just too complex to understand, and partners never really warmed to it. The name was the ultimate death punch: no one knew how to pronounce it (it rhymes with "five").
4. Line of sight (LOS) wireless
LOS, or fixed wireless, emerged about 10 years ago as a way for cities to deploy their own network using the same model as mobile phone carriers.
According to IT analyst Charles King, LOS was just too complex and inflexible, especially compared to newer technologies such as Wi-Fi and WiMAX.
5. Virtual reality
One of the problems with VR is that the human brain has a hard time perceiving two worlds at once – especially when it means donning a pair of goggles that block out one of those worlds (the real one).
Videogames such as World of Warcraft pull you into the action, but you are still well-aware of your surroundings. Mind you, Microsoft Natal is a stage on from old-school VR, the latest attempt to meld the virtual world with the physical.
6. The driverless car
This one seems to have a host of problems – the high-cost of the infrastructure, AI that is not anywhere near ready, and obvious safety concerns. There's also the fact a train or a bus makes more sense in dense urban areas.
Adding robotics to cars does make sense though, and both Enderle and King suggested that driverless cars could possibly become a reality within the next 10 years for long road trips.
Your comments (4) Click to add a new comment
mbb
July 7th
4. I don't think I ever heard anyone say HD DVD was a superior optical technology (except perhaps for its backwards compatibility), but it was surely the superior format at launch. It included internet connectivity as a requirement for players, PiP was in the spec from the start, VC1 encoding was standard and it was much cheaper. Blu-ray has only recently caught up with all these features - and they're still not compulsory.
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budryerson
July 6th
3. #2 Quadrophonc sound failed mainly because the "surround" effect is more complicated than the simple addition of two more audio channels. Sadly, "front" and "back" speakers do not and cannot produce the same magical stereo image that "left" and "right" speakers do.
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kkeane
July 3rd
2. Number 10: The Segway is hugely successful. Here in California, you see it all over the place.
I don't think that the makers ever really meant it as universal transport solution for everybody - that was just a marketing ploy to draw attention to the device and make the real target audience - police, security, maintenance, aware of it.
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niilotippler
July 3rd
1. Number 9 reminds me of a project I was involved in a few years back where the client wanted to create a 3D virtual shopping environment where people could browse "real" virtual stores, talk to virtual shopkeepers and mingle with other shoppers. Their idea was that you would live in this virtual world and would travel around it just as you do in the real world. It was actually proposed that visitors to the site would "walk" in real time along streets, looking in shop windows and then entering stores to browse and purchase goods... in REAL TIME. That would basically be like going to Amazon.com and then having to take a 20 minute "stroll" from the Books section to the Electronics section. *sigh*... luckily, the project never got off the ground. :)
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