FALL OF THE TECH GIANTS

Companies are working hard to ensure they stay up to date with the latest technology trends. AI, blockchain, and recent technologies are not buzzwords anymore. Although most people have become more than tech-savvy and are keeping up with trends, the impact of new technologies often comes with a bang, typically from a single innovative company

Some would say that new technologies must be a safe investment or industry to venture into, but with recent developments on the crypto market and the volatility involved, we have once again been reminded that it takes time for new technologies and advancements to become industry standards. Within the respective fields there will also be companies that come up and look like the next new thing, but will take the wrong turns and simply not survive the competition.

In this blog post we look at some companies that seemed to rock the world, but did not keep their ear to the digital rail, and simply missed the train.

Finnish Nokia was a leading mobile producer and was the most sold brand in the world in 1998, and are still topping the list for the world’s most sold mobile phones to date thanks to the handsets released in 2003 and 2005: 247 million units sold of model 1100 and 245.7 million units sold of model 1110.

The company’s success led many to think that they would dominate the industry. As technology advanced and mobile phones became smartphones with the help of iOS from Apple and Android devices, Nokia set out to create the iPhone-killer in 2009, but failed and could not even be saved when sold to Microsoft in 2011.

Pets.com is nowadays a classic example out of the dot com era, and an early version of Amazon, if you will. The idea was brilliant and based on cutting out the middleman, selling pet accessories through the web portal. The site was launched with a commercial during Superbowl 2000, and followed up with a heavy campaign rolled out online, in print and basically any type of media. Even after raising $82.5 million in funds by an initial public offering, the company saw 9 months of straight losses and was eventually buried in the backyard.

Although we would not recommend anyone to download copyrighted material, we have to mention Napster. Napster was a game changer in the music industry, and an embryo to streaming services. The idea and success of the platform was brilliant and could have turned out to be a solid cornerstone in the music industry. Instead of successfully working with publishers, record labels and partners, they had to kill the music after a handful of lawsuits (one of them famously led by Metallica profile Lars Ulrich).

The 2 founding members of the company teamed up in 1998 and based their early and progressive ideas about wearables on military technology. Jawbone's first releases were focusing on Bluetooth headsets, but their releases of early versions of fitness wearables, is what really put them on the map. On the forefront in the fitness industry and pushing technology forward with their UP range of wristbands, it was a big surprise to most when the company was liquidated in 2017 due to the competition faced from Fitbit.

When Blackberry hit the market it had everyone in a frenzy, from “thumbing” on the keyboard to using the trackball which allowed four-way scrolling. 2013 saw the company release the Z10 and Q10 smartphones, which both had touch screens. It seems the company was doing quite well until 2016, when it announced shutting down its internal hardware development to focus purely on software, services and cybersecurity. It’s unfortunate that the brand had to step out of the market due to licensing issues.

Netscape was a computer company known for its web browser Netscape Navigator, which was very popular in the 1990s. Unfortunately this took a turn for the worse when Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE) browser took a significant lead in usage. Netscape took another stab at the lucrative industry by starting the open source Mozilla project, which eventually resulted in the Firefox Web browser. This too didn’t end well, as a partnership they entered ended up going south.

Another tech giant that was established in the 90’s which unfortunately crumbled and lost its ground to Google, then was subsequently purchased by Yahoo in 2003. Back in the 90s no rivals could compete with Altavista, as it had indexed about 20 million webpages, which was more than their rivals. Yahoo has also retired the search engine after its brief stay.

Once an all time fav, our desktop in the palm of our hands. This company gave the consumers what they wanted in handheld computers. Due to product delays and not keeping up with the latest software developments, the company had to discontinue in 2011 after a long run in the industry.

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