Certain products related to computing, such as hardware, software, and smartphones, were mass-marketed and highly anticipated ahead of their launch, but are known to have failed commercially. Reasons for their failure include the products failing consumer expectations upon launch, the first round of units suffering defects, a controversy negatively affecting sales, or being the result of poor marketing, regardless of reception. In any case, these products failed to meet their companies' expectations needed to be considered successful, typically due to them failing on average to break even, resulting in the companies losing money. These high-profile items tend to appear on computer- and hardware-related "worst" lists or lists of failures (e.g., "tech fails").
Hardware
Components and peripherals
CueCat (2000–2001)
The CueCat is a cat-shaped barcode reader created by Dallas-based Digital Convergence Corporation amid the dot-com bubble and distributed from 2000 until the company's bankruptcy in 2001. Invented by Jovan Hutton Pulitzer (then named Jeffry Jovan Philyaw) intended to make accessing the websites of advertisers from newspapers, magazines, and catalogs easier, the device was plugged into a computer through its PS/2 port (later a USB port) and, along with regular barcodes, could read specialized barcodes on printed advertisements, which would then take the user to the target web page. The company heavily promoted the CueCat as it aimed to sell 50 million units by the end of 2001. The product's sponsors included The Coca-Cola Company, RadioShack, NBC, and Belo Corporation. It also mailed hundreds of thousands to subscribers of newspapers and magazines; Forbes distributed about 830,000 units and Wired about 500,000. The CueCat's concept of replacing typing in a URL with scanning barcodes for convenience was met with criticism and derision. Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal lampooned the need to have a computer nearby when scanning, calling it "unnatural and ridiculous". He also found that the majority of the special barcodes did not match the printed URLs, instead linking to general web pages, for which he asserted he could have typed them in faster. In addition, Digital Convergence received criticism for using the devices to send personally identifiable information of their users back to the company. The security concerns were amplified when, in late 2000, the CueCat website was subject to a breach that exposed the users' personal names and email addresses. Digital Convergence ended up giving out four million units in the United States—far short of its 50 million goal—with six million left unsold, and the company folded in 2001. The CueCat was ranked No. 20 on PC World's list of "The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time". It also landed on Time's list of "The 50 Worst Inventions", calling it "little more than a high-tech paperweight". Despite its poor showing, the CueCat has been viewed as a precursor to QR codes, which have become ubiquitous.
Itanium (2001–2020)
Itanium was a brand of 64-bit Intel microprocessors first announced in 1994 and released in 2001, after long delays. It was born in December 1988 as a secret Hewlett-Packard research project to succeed the company's PA-RISC instruction set architecture. Intel had its own processor in development, which would have extended its own x86 architecture to 64 bits while still retaining x86 compatibility, but dropped all work on the chip's design by June 8, 1994, when it announced a collaboration with Hewlett-Packard to develop a new 64-bit architecture called IA-64. Intel announced the Itanium in 1997 with considerable fanfare, with International Data Group initially projecting sales to reach $38 billion by 2001. However, the first Itanium processor, codenamed Merced, suffered development delays, leading Silicon Graphics to cancel its first-generation Itanium system and Sun Microsystems to abandon the Itanium version of its Solaris operating system. Merced garnered a negative reception upon its May 2001 release for its sluggish performance and software incompatibility with x86-based processors. Meanwhile, in 2003, Advanced Micro Devices announced the first fully x86-compatible 64-bit processor, AMD64-based Opteron, and Intel faced a new challenger to its dominance in the office and home user markets. Intel was also forced to lower its ambitions for the struggling Itanium to being only a niche product for high-end systems, or what Pat Gelsinger called "the biggest iron". Further trouble was spelled in 2005, when Microsoft canceled Windows for Itanium-based workstations and IBM and Dell dropped Itanium servers, with HP being the only top server manufacturer to sell them. When in 2019 Intel announced that it would accept orders up until January 30, 2020, and ship the last microprocessors by July 29, 2021, the only systems that were powered by an Itanium 9700-based chip, the last of the Itanium chips sold, were HPE Integrity Superdome computers. Far short of IDG's original projections, the Itanium line of processors generated sales worth only $1.4 billion, against an estimated billions invested into the project, and ultimately failed to replace the x86 architecture. The Itanium was soon recognized as a failure, for which the computer industry dubbed it "Itanic", after the ill-fated ocean liner.
Personal computers
TI-99/4 (1979–1981)
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