The HoloLens, a mixed reality headset launched in 2016 and discontinued in 2023, didn’t capture a large enough market to justify continued investment and only sold 300,000 units. It failed because its usefulness never grew over time, while it has a limited field of vision and the virtual objects are only visible in a pretty small square in the middle. Meanwhile, competitors like Apple and Meta became dominant players in the consumer AR/VR space.
In 2014, Hooli was formed on the HBO show Silicon Valley.
Hooli lost a major court battle to Pied Piper, which leads to the dissolution of a division of Hooli. What was left of Hooli became part of Pied Piper. Pied Piper was dissolved, so Hooli went with it.
Pied Piper built a cloud based compression platform to allow users to compress and share their files between their devices. They build a platform which contains a neural net which means that the platform improves the more files that are uploaded.
The platform proved popular with people within the tech industry but unpopular with the general public who didn’t understand how to use it. Despite offering classes to teach users how to use it, the platform was unable to get the required daily active users. The team panicked and resorted to buying fake users which poisoned the company’s reputation making it impossible to raise funding.
In 1988, RJ Reynolds Tobacco decided to develop a smokeless cigarette. The company invested $325 million into manufacturing the product, but consumers didn’t like the taste.
Released in 2007, this energy drink was pulled from shelves in the US because of its suggestive name. The FDA decided that Cocaine was “illegally marketing the drink as both a street drug alternative and a dietary supplement.” The drink is still sold in Europe under its original name.
Released in 2016 and discontinued in 2017, 2.5 million Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones were recalled due to complaints of overheating and exploding batteries.
In 2000, Heinz decided to add an unexpected twist to their ketchup to catch children’s attention. They came up with “EZ Squirt” colored ketchup, which came in three main colors: teal, green, and purple. The ketchup required a lot of food dye and engineering to make it taste like ketchup. The novelty of using ketchup to decorate food wore off after six years.
The operating system Windows Vista, released in 2007, was a huge failure. It flopped due to new security features, performance, driver support, and product activation issues.
In 2003, before everyone was playing games on their smartphones, Nokia decided to combine phones and gaming. The company expected a better reception to their Nokia N-gage, but it ended up being a total failure. This ‘taco phone’, as some people began referring to it, only managed to reach one-third of its 6 million units in sales.
“Mars Needs Moms” was an utter disappointment for Disney in 2011. The animated film cost $150 million to produce and probably $50 million more went to marketing. The saddest part is that the movie only made only $6.9 million in its debut at the domestic box office.
In 1996, McDonald’s decided to broaden its target demographic by introducing a burger, Arch Deluxe. The mustard-mayonnaise sauce was supposed to appeal to adult tastes. However, even a $100 million advertising campaign couldn’t convince grown-ups to eat the burger. The failed product was soon discontinued, and its marketing campaign is now considered to be one of the most expensive flops of all time.
