And despite being failures, some of these handsets are quite collectable, so we have included a buyers guide in some cases as well.
1. Microsoft KIN (2010)In our view the most disastrous mobile phone product launch ever, the Microsoft KIN was the wrong product at the wrong time, but that was only half the story.While the world was waiting for Windows Phone 7 to come along and do battle with the iPhone and Android handsets, Microsoft were also working on the KIN feature phone. Part of the problem was that feature phones were dying off, and the KIN was just too limited to be accepted by consumers. But what was worse is that the software was slow and buggy, so even if you did buy one (and hardly anyone did) the chances were that they'd send it back. But the KIN was a double disaster. The team that created it were largely from a Microsoft subsidiary called Danger who developed the T-Mobile Sidekick. Because of the drain of talent and resources, Danger suffered a catastrophic systems failure which was an early example of what happens when cloud storage goes wrong. Effectively, this mess-up killed the successful Sidekick line. It rapidly became clear that the KIN product was not selling and the whole thing was cancelled. And then for good measure, Microsoft closed down the entire division responsible for the fiasco. Just to be on the safe side. |
The Motorola
ROKR E1 is the phone that Apple would like
you to forget. Why? Because the ROKR was a failed collaboration
between Motorola and Apple and was designed to bring
iTunes to a mobile phone. |
Not all product disasters are because of bad products.
The problem with the BlackBerry
Z10 was that it was at least two years too
late, and although it was a polished product with a
lot of nice features there was basically no market, leading
to a nearly billion-dollar
stock writeoff and the firing
of their CEO. |
Despite the name, the Apple
iPhone 4 was really the start of the second
distinct generation of iPhones and it was a major improvement
over previous generations. |
The Nokia
7600 was Nokia's second 3G phone, but it was
the first one to be widely available. But the weird
lozenge-shape and difficult to use keypad were completely
nuts. Customers stayed away in droves. |
6. Siemens Xelibri series (2003 - 2004)The Siemens Xelibri range consisted of eight highly unusual fashion phones that were designed specifically to be used as secondary devices that you could take with you on a night out. Designed more for style than function, the Xelibri range never really caught on (despite a massive marketing campaign) and was canned after just two generations.![]() Buyers guide: the Xelibri 1 is the rarest, the Xelibri 6 is the most widely available. Prices range from €20 to €50. |
Both Siemens and Nokia were companies that could
produce a weird looking handset. Although at first glance
the Siemens
SX1 Symbian smartphone looked normal, a closer
inspection showed that the number keys were arranged
up the side, making it rather awkward to use for any
kind of text input. |
BlackBerry's first attempt to counter the iPhone
was the BlackBerry
Storm, launched in 2008. But it had a poor screen
and buggy software. Early negative reviews proved a
major embarrassment and the product bombed. |
The original Motorola RAZR had been a massive hit
(despite its awful software), but it was strictly a
fashion phone.. and fashions change. However, Motorola
kept pumping out RAZR variants in an attempt to regain
some of the old magic and the Motorola
RAZR2 was a high-profile attempt that failed. |
The rise and fall of Palm over the years is a complicated
story of an early innovator being outpaced by upstart
rivals. By 2009 it was in terminal decline, and is a
last ditch-attempt to reverse its fortunes it piled
all of its resources into the WebOS-based Palm
Pre, an interesting touchscreen device that could
have been a world leader if they'd announced it a couple
of years beforehand. |
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