As the wireless industry kicks into high gear for the upcoming holiday shopping season, and handset makers pull out all the stops to hype their latest offerings, now seems a good time to take a tour of some similarly much-hyped phones from the industry’s past-those that didn’t quite live up to expectations.
Those handsets worth revising include the Palm Foleo, the Gizmondo, the Wildseed-based Kurv from Kyocera, the Samsung Matrix phone, the Nokia N-Gage, the Sendo X, the Motorola T900 two-way pager, the Sierra Wireless Voq and the Modeo TV phone from HTC.
In some cases-the Foleo, Modeo TV phone and Kurv, for example-these devices never even enjoyed a commercial launch. In other cases-the T900, for example-the entire market fell apart around the device. And in some spectacular examples-the Gizmondo for one-the device was the centerpiece of a high-flying business model that came crashing apart.
Although final shipment numbers were never released on any of these phones, they serve to highlight handset and business strategies that largely failed to pan out. Current industry players would do well to heed the lessons from the past.
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