Over the years, companies have come up with new inventions nonstop. Some of them are quite successful in the market. But on some occasions, these new gadgets do not obtain the approval of the public and the sales do not reach large figures; the company decides to eliminate them from its catalogs, and there are even occasions when the product does not even reach the market . And we are going to tell you five cases in which the inventions have not had the expected success .
Palm Foleo
A month before the Asus Eee PC was presented in society, the defunct Palm , at the hands of its founder Jeff Hawkins , presented its Palm Foleo to the world . This invention was the perfect "companion" to any Palm Treo smartphone . Why? Because the user would be able to enlarge the screen of his mobile terminal and be able to work with emails or Office documents in a more comfortable way.
What was this Palm Foleo? It looked like a small laptop "" 10 inches to be exact "", although it could operate on its own. I needed to always be connected via Bluetooth, with a Palm Treo to get the most out of this concept. Moreover, one of the main characteristics that the company boasted was its start-up time: its start-up was immediate, and the applications were ready to be used.
However, a month later it was possible to start selling the Asus Eee PC , a netbook that had Windows XP installed and that could function as a low-performance laptop, but did not need an advanced mobile to function. In addition, the price of these low-cost notebooks were much lower than what Palm intended with its Foleo, which amounted to $ 500 . Finally, the product did not even see the light. Everything was in great expectation.
Palm LifeDrive
In the days of PDAs (electronic agendas), Palm was one of the most widely recognized companies in the world: they used icons that were easy to use, quite stable and that offered exactly what users asked for. However, they also had some shortcomings: they could not use more than one application at the same time "" there was no multitasking execution "" and the power of the American's products could not be compared with the Pocket PC platform , the competition of devices Palm in Windows format .
Hence, Palm decided to launch its flagship product, the Palm LifeDrive . What did this invention offer? An aluminum chassis, very well finished, with the possibility of connecting to WiFi networks "" at that time WiFi b / g "" and, above all, it included an internal four GigaByte hard disk , something that was not abundant at that time and that today it is more than usual.
However, its high price, the little innovation in the icons that were already beginning to be repetitive and the slowness of its start-up , meant that, even when it was released on the market, the sales of this equipment were not spectacular.
Microsoft KIN
In recent years, social networks have played an important role in new technologies . And that has been noticed in the creation of more and more services that can be accessed from a computer's Internet browser. And that was the boost Microsoft needed to present its two smart phones: Microsoft KIN : KIN One and KIN Two . Both teams were focused on a type of public addicted to social networks and different instant messaging services.
They were presented in April 2010, and after terrible sales "" there is talk of about 500 units sold "" they decided to abandon the platform and group the team of developers into the Windows Phone 7 development team and adopt some of their features two terminals. Microsoft KIN market lasted 48 days .
Nexus Q
It was one of the surprises that Google had prepared for the past year 2012. Its name was Nexus Q and it joined the Nexus family that, at that time, consisted of smartphones and tablets . But the Nexus Q was a multimedia player that was based on Android and that if the relevant application was downloaded from the Google Play store , any mobile or tablet based on the same platform could serve as a remote control.
This Nexus Q , which was designed by and to get the most out of the Internet giant's online store , was another of the inventions that, after being analyzed by various specialized portals, never hit the market. One of the reasons was the 300 euros that it had marked before going on sale.
UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC)
They were the predecessors of netbooks . Although perhaps the most correct thing would be to place these UMPC (ultramobile PCs) in the Tablet PC sector that used to have the same screen size as a conventional laptop "" It is also true that there were 12-inch models "". But these small inventions used to appear on the market with a seven-inch screen and accompanied by a pointer / stylus to handle the Tablet version of Windows XP . There were cases where a full-format sliding keyboard was introduced.
In addition, they had different connections and the programs that could be run on a conventional computer could also be run on this type of equipment. Although their power had to be taken into account: these UMPCs had integrated low-voltage Intel Celeron processors that consumed less power than usual.
Even so, although different models were sold in all the markets of the world, they were not spread too much, since their high price ”” around 1000 euros ””, made them focus on a more professional public.