With great reward comes risk, and tech companies are probably pretty familiar with that sentiment. Each product, service, or device is a gamble on whether it will resonate, successfully separating us from our discretionary income, or languish on stockroom shelves, untouched.
All companies, even the biggest ones, are built upon a mixture of successes and failures. Amazon, for example, is ridiculously successful, right? So successful that I’m scared to look at Jeff Bezos’ net worth in fear of being lost in a sea of unending numbers. But the Fire Phone could very well be the most underwhelming product of 2014, and by slashing its cost from $US200 to $US.99 last month, Amazon probably knows it.
But Amazon is by no means the only one. HTC might have a sterling flagship device now, but it wasn’t too long ago that we lived in the era of HTC First, the ultra-flop Facebook smartphone. I also hear people have issues with Windows 8? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
What do you think have been some of the biggest mess ups in tech history? Failure can always lead to great things in the future, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing.
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