Top 10 Tech Products That Bombed So Hard They Destroyed the Company

Concord Camera

The Eye-Q Go had one distinguishing characteristic - it was the first publicly available digital camera to utilize Bluetooth technology. Unfortunately, Concord did absolutely nothing with that potential. Even worse, they completely bungled it. The Eye-Q Go was a horrible camera in every sense of the word. The pictures it produced were very dark thanks to both a faulty flash and its active pixel sensor. Its upload speed was also painfully slow, as transferring just 7MB worth of photos from the camera to the computer took about fifteen minutes. Even by the standards of old tech, that was painful. It was an absolute disaster of a release, and it helped contribute to Concord’s demise, with the company going defunct in 2009.

Peek, Inc.

In 2007, Virgin Mobile employees left the company and started their own called Peek, Inc. They focused on handheld mobile devices, but there was just one problem - a little competitor called Apple. Released in 2007, the iPhone completely steamrolled the opposition and changed the very fabric of not only the mobile industry, but technology as a whole. Peek, which basically just sent emails and texts, simply could not compete. A series of further blunders followed, including the bafflingly misguided TwitterPeek, which allowed users to access Twitter for the low cost of $8 a month. Why? We don’t know. And neither did anybody else. It was called one of the Worst Gadgets of the Decade by Gizmodo, and Peek went out of business in 2012.

Digital:Convergence Corporation

The early internet was a weird time, and there were certainly some growing pains. Enter the :CueCat. This thing was produced by Digital:Convergence Corporation, and it allowed users to scan a barcode that had been printed in a book, newspaper, or magazine. This barcode would then send the scanner to a URL, thereby giving them access to a specific webpage. Like we said, growing pains. Despite some major partners like Forbes and Wired, it received harsh reviews and attracted some major privacy concerns. These concerns were founded in September 2000, when nearly 150,000 users were affected by a security breach. It was like pouring water on a grease fire and the company dissolved the next year, losing investors $185 million.

Hewlett-Packard

The Hewlett-Packard Company is better known as HP, and it was founded all the way back in 1939. It was doing well into the late 2000s, buying out companies left and right for billions of dollars. And then came the ill-fated HP TouchPad. Tablets were all the rage in the early 2010s - a phase once again kickstarted by Apple. Unfortunately, the TouchPad was no iPad. It suffered from a painfully slow performance which did not measure up to its $600 price tag. The device was not long for the world, lasting just 49 days before HP announced that it was discontinuing service. Even worse, HP declared that it was abandoning consumer goods altogether, and the company went defunct just a few years later.

Sinclair Vehicles

Just one look at the Sinclair C5 is enough to elicit chuckles and a “What the heck is that?” Well, that is an electric tricycle. Some bizarre amalgamation of a motorcycle, tricycle, and Vespa, the Sinclair C5 was a unique vehicle, indeed. But unique doesn’t always mean good. This thing was widely mocked by the British press, receiving criticism for its lack of weatherproofing, horrible battery that died quickly, and pitiful max speed of just fifteen miles an hour. That, and it just looked ridiculous. The electric tricycle sold very poorly and lasted just a couple of months before Sinclair Vehicles went into receivership.

Kerbango

Nowadays, it’s very simple to listen to the radio on your computer or smartphone. But not so back in the early 2000s. Kerbango Internet Radio was exactly what it advertised - a device that allowed users to access internet audio without a physical computer. Unfortunately, there were a few problems. The concept was still relatively niche, the device cost upwards of $300, and it required broadband internet at a time when dial-up was the norm. In fact, Kerbango was such a bomb that it was never even released! Despite some strong buzz and a heavy advertising campaign, the Internet Radio never appeared. After countless infuriating delays, Kerbango was bought out by 3Com, and they subsequently announced that they were leaving the consumer goods market.

Juicero

Juicers are simple - you put fruit in, you press a button, and you get juice. Juicero made it needlessly complicated, and it cost them - both literally and figuratively. The Juicero Press was like Netflix mixed with Keurig. Users had to subscribe to Juicero’s service, and in return they got single-serve juice packets to be used in the Press. Even worse, these packs had to be “verified” with a QR code before the juice was released. As if the basic concept of the Juicero Press wasn’t silly enough, Bloomberg News then revealed that you could simply squeeze the packs by hand. Keep in mind that this pointless device cost $700! Just one year after the gadget’s rollout, Juicero went defunct owing to a lack of sales.

Fusion Garage

The tablet industry is evidently quite competitive, and more than a little risky. It helped take down HP, and it also took down a little company called Fusion Garage. The Singapore firm faced controversy right out of the gate. They were working with TechCrunch co-editor Michael Arrington to release a device called the CrunchPad. However, they betrayed Arrington and released the CrunchPad without his involvement or say-so, renaming it the JooJoo. Arrington in turn sued Fusion Garage. The JooJoo was released in March 2010 and lasted just eight months before entering its end of life stage. Thanks to horrible sales and an impending lawsuit in federal court, Fusion Garage went into liquidation with a combined debt of $40 million.

Palm, Inc.

Founded in 1992, Palm, Inc. focused on making PDAs, which was an early form of mobile device. When the iPhone came along (surprise, surprise), Palm, Inc. announced that they were stopping production on all future PDAs and entering the smartphone market. Enter the Palm Pre, a slider smartphone using Palm’s own operating system, webOS. Unfortunately, the phone was poorly and cheaply designed, with users reporting easily-cracked screens and loose sliding mechanisms. Furthermore, it launched with Sprint being its only American carrier, which significantly hindered sales. It was a badly-planned smartphone in basically every regard, and the sales were so poor that they killed Palm, Inc. for good. With plummeting share prices, Palm was purchased by HP for $1.2 billion.

Theranos

One good thing can be said about these companies, and that’s that they tried. The same can’t be said for Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes was just 19 when she created Theranos, which claimed to revolutionize blood testing through its “Edison” machines. According to the patent, these automated gadgets could quickly analyze blood with less than a drop. However, the tech was never peer reviewed, and it was later proven that basically everything about it was either wildly exaggerated or made up. Theranos went defunct in 2018, and the disgraced Holmes was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy. She was sentenced to about eleven years in prison, and the company’s president, Sunny Balwani, was sentenced to almost thirteen.