Over the years, tech start-ups and giants have come and gone. In the ever-changing world of technology, a company needs to do more than just keep up with the times in order to survive.
We’ve seen even huge companies go bust over the few decades and even the most promising products can end up obsolete in the blink of an eye.
We’ve been through the history books to dig out some of the most interesting companies that have gone under despite being at the forefront of the industry during their heyday.
Blockbuster Video
Blockbuster was an American-based company that offered home movie and video game rental services through brick-and-mortar stores.
It became known worldwide in the 1990s but later suffered at the hands of competition fromNetflixand other video-on-demand services.
Blockbuster turned down a sale offer from Netflix for $50 million in the year 2000, but was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2010 after declining sales in the years that followed.
SyQuest was an early manufacturer of hard disk drives for personal computers. The company also produced cartridge disk drives which made it the most popular means for transferring large digital documents to professional printers.
In the late 1990s, SyQuest began to struggle in a market where Zip drives and writeable CDs were gaining popularity and increasing in capacity. Online file transfer via FTP also proved a better system for corporate users and sales of SyQuest products declined. Due to increasing financial losses, SyQuest was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1998.
Back in the days when physical media was an important part of the computer world, Iomega was a big name in the industry.
This company manufactured a range of different storage solutions aimed at replacing the humble 3.5-inch floppy disk.
The most well-known of Iomega’s products was theZip drive- a high-capacity disk storage system that started out with a 100 MB capacity but would later reach dizzying heights of 750 MBs. Like many other storage mediums, the humble Zip drive later suffered at the hands of both CD and DVD resulting in it falling out of favours in the early 2000s.
Iomega attempted to keep afloat by releasing various new products such as MP3 players, external hard drives and NAS devices, but none of them was successful enough.
Despite the troubles, Iomega was bought out by EMC in 2008 for $213 million and then had its products rebranded as LenovoEMC in 2013.
Napster was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing service that allowed users to share digital files, usually songs, over the internet.
It was a ground-breaking service at the time, but the company soon ran into legal difficulties over copyright infringement.
Napster was forced to cease operations and declare bankruptcy. Napster’s brand and logo were eventually acquired by Roxio which rebooted the brand as Napster 2.0.
Later the new Napster was purchased by Best Buy for $121 million and then merged with Rhapsody in 2011. In 2016 the Napster brand was given new life and continues to operate today as a Spotify competitor.
Compaq was originally founded in 1982 and had a primary focus of developing and selling computers and related products.
Compaq was notably the first company to legally reverse engineer the IBM Personal Computer and rose to industry fame in the 1990s becoming the largest supplier of computers during that time.
Compaq struggled to compete with computing giants HP and Dell, suffering especially in the price wars of the time. The company was acquired by HP in 2002 for $25 billion and the brand was used by HP for lower-end systems until being discontinued in 2013.
Boo.com was a British company that launched in 1999 and sold branded fashion products over the internet. This was one of the first companies to spectacularly fail during the dot-com bust around that time.
Boo.com went out of business while awash with stories of lavish corporate lifestyles and lack of proper management. It has since been cited many times as “a classic example of failed e-commerce strategy” and a warning to other similar businesses that followed.
3DFX interactive
3dfx Interactive was a big name in the gaming world in the 1990s. The company primarily manufactured 3D graphics processing units and thengraphics cardsthe most popular of which were the Voodoo and Voodoo2.
3dfx Interactive suffered in later years and eventually went bankrupt in 2002 when it was acquired by Nvidia for intellectual property rights.
DeLorean Motor Co.
The DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) was an automobile company perhaps most well-known for the DeLorean DMC-12 sports car that was featured heavily in the Back To The Future film trilogy.
The company was originally founded by John DeLorean in 1975. John DeLorean was known in the industry as a capable engineer and business innovator.
He also famously heavily relied on the British government for funding the start-up to the sum of around $120 million with the promise of building his manufacturing plants in Northern Ireland. The British government was desperate to help create jobs in Northern Ireland and quell the violence of the time.
Despite the funding and backing, a lack of demand, cost overruns and unfavourable exchange rates eventually began to harm the business. In a desperate attempt to keep the company alive, John DeLorean was even filmed appearing to accept money to take part in drug trafficking and discussing the drug deal with undercover FBI agents. He was later acquitted of all charges, but his business was in tatters and DMC went bankrupt in 1982.
Though thebrand still lives onnow in the form of an electric vehicle.
Wang Laboratories
Wang Laboratories was originally founded in 1951 but peaked in the 1980s when it had annual revenues in excess of $3 billion and employed over 33,000 people.
Wang Labs main focus was on computers for word processing and it was thoroughly successful when this was what the industry needed.
Later on though, the market for standalone word processing systems collapsed as the personal computer began to take hold. Wang Laboratories failed to adapt and change with the times to realise the threat from personal computers with word processing software. As a result, the company was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1992.
Wang Laboratories was acquired by Getronics then sold to KPN in 2007 and CompuCom in 2008 before basically ceasing to exist as a distinct brand or division after that time.
Pets.com was an internet business that sold pet supplies online during the dot-com boom. The company managed to sell well in the beginning due to the attention it initially got, but thanks to weak business fundamentals it lost money on most of those sales. This poor financial management would eventually spell the company’s demise.
Like Boo.com, Pets.com became one of the spectacular failures of the dot-com boom era. Its demise also took with it over $300 million in investment capital the company had managed to acquire during its start-up.
