TOP-15 failure technologies 2011

2011 reaped unknown "crop" of the stopped and folded IT projects, products and technologies, the technology companies which left the market. The rating for 2011 was provided by the CIO.com edition.

WebOS и HP TouchPad

WebOS reached the highest position in the market in April, 2010 when HP announced plans to purchase the owner of WebOS, Palm company, for $1.2 billion. But everything failed in August, 2011 when announced to HP cessation of production of devices for LG WebOS (before LuneOS) and failure from PC business development. OS shortly sighed when it of HP reduced the cost of the TouchPad tablet to $99, and died.

Cisco Flip video business

Cisco decided to review the direction of investments and to strengthen financial performance. Flip video which was a part of a product portfolio of Cisco since 2009 - since the moment of acquisition of Pure Digital company became one of the first victims of upgrade of consumer business of Cisco. The volume of this business in the total amount of revenues of Cisco was 15% according to the reporting in the second financial quarter, and sales of Flip reached a half from what was expected by the company.

Google Labs, Health, Video

Implementing new trends with arrival of the CEO of Google Larry Page, the company this year refused a number of products. In July it surprised the industry with the declaration of closing of Google Labs. Such services as Google Reader and Google Maps came out Labs. Google refused also Google Health, and gave up as a bad job Google Video in the spring - after purchase in 2006 YouTube for $1.65 billion it was only a matter of time.

Microsoft Zune devices

Microsoft, confirming reputation of one of the worst keepers of technology secrets, in October reported murder of its musical Zune player - in five years after his debut as the potential competitor of iPod. In spite of the fact that the equipment Zune received positive reviews, it was not succeeded to take a market share - iPod from Apple continues to dominate.

Guitar Hero от Activision

In January, 2009 Activision loudly declared an exit of Guitar Hero III – the project, worth one billion dollars, to the most cash video game of all times. Nevertheless, in February of this year Activision announced Guitar Hero project completion (the debut took place in 2005). According to the publisher, taking into account conditions of the current market, the company cannot provide profitability of these games. However in the summer the CEO of Activision Blizzard let know - something the best, than Guitar Hero, perhaps is in work.

MeeGo

This operating system for mobile devices at the beginning of 2010 was announced by the companies Intel and Nokia Corporation. At the heart of it- Linux. In particular, the shortage of the mobile software Windows for Atom processors was the cause of its emergence. The project was started by community Linux Foundation. However less than in two years after start of the project MeeGo it was integrated with LiMo for creation of the new mobile technology which received the name Tizen, intended for development of applications, at the heart of which HTML5.

Cloud service of e-mail Cisco

Cisco had a service of e-mail, it is the truth. The company stopped it in 13 months after start. Cisco winded down its work, having spent $250 million for start of a product because clients got used "consider e-mail as the serious, multidimensional tool".

Novell Vibe cloud

In July Novell announced probable closing of a cloud social service of joint activity of Vibe Cloud which was injured a failure despite the hot market and the competition of products. The plan of Novell consisted in gradual integration (from 12 to 18 months) of opportunities and functionality of Vibe Cloud in his relative - Vibe On Prem (the consolidated offer is called Novell Vibe).

Qwikster

Without restraint the popular supplier of DVD and a streaming video of Netflix found out that even she can make mistakes. Clients showed extreme discontent after the declaration of the company of plans in September to separate business of mail delivery of DVD in separate structure under the name Qwikster, at the same time focusing stream video in Netflix. And already less than in a month after announcement of the plan Netflix reconciled under pressure of clients and discarded the idea of Qwikster. The CEO of the company Read wrote Hastings (Reed Hastings) in the blog in October: "It is clear that for our many participants two websites complicated a lot of things therefore we intend to leave Netflix uniform the place for a streaming video and DVD disks. It means, any changes: one website, one account, one password... in other words, any Qwikster".

DroidDream

In March Google used the mechanism of remote "switch" of the nix-applications infected with DroidDream and loaded by users mobile Android devices. Google detected more than 50 applications infected with this software in Android Market. Google told that it "will add a number of measures for prevention of accomplishment of the malware using similar exploits at distribution via Android Market".

Yahoo Buzz

The social network with rating service Yahoo Buzz was started in 2008 and fell a victim of efforts of Yahoo on alignment of a financial position. The following attempt of Yahoo to improve a financial status was more severe: there were many dismissals.

T-Mobile Sidekick

T-Mobile announced in February that the cloud service from Danger Service (Microsoft subsidiary company) used by users of the T-Mobile Sidekick smartphones since the end of May will not be available. T-Mobile began sales of Sidekick devices in 2002, then it was one of the first smartphones on a cloud platform. However in March T-Mobile provided Sidekick again - now as Sidekick 4G which will work in HSPA T-Mobile network +, equipped with complete sliding QWERTY keyboard and running Android from Google.

HP Neoview

In January declared to HP a stop of active sales of Neoview four years later after an output of the main BI system of the company to the market. "Versions of solutions of the growing needs for the relation of explosive growth of amounts of data, new information types, new classes of analytics and new delivery patterns are required for our clients", said in the statement of HP. At the same time it is not mentioned that will be with the acting clients. Told HP that for satisfaction of requests of clients in this sphere will work with such partners as Microsoft.

Home service of monitoring of energy consumption

Microsoft and Google separately, announced in June a stop of development of the relevant proposals in house control over energy consumption. Google was the first, having stated that it will close the PowerMeter in the middle of September. "Our efforts did not respond such rapid growth as we would like that therefore we stop this service", said in the corporate blog of the company. In a week of Microsoft disconnected the service "Holm energy monitoring service" referring to the low rating of implementation during beta testing.

Flock browser

The Flock web browser did a little noise and in recent years received $ dollars 30 million as the venture funding. But as independent business the browser was impractical and was redeemed by the company of online games Zynga, and in April the project was closed.

Cirtas Systems

The company on providing a cloud service of the data warehouse was formed in 2008 and as financing attracted more than $32 million only to be closed in 2011. The company showed promises, having entered the list of "hot" startups "Network World's 2009 list". Nevertheless, for the present the market of services of cloud storage remains gloomy, with larger players, such as Iron Mountain and EMC who also refused the offers.