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Top 10 wrong technology predictions

Predicting technology trends can be difficult and every year leading industry analysts (like Gartner and IDC) release their technology predictions for the following year. Even academics, market leaders, and top executives get it wrong, or fail to predict when the technology will actually (if at all?) come to fruition. Here are a few notable examples of failed, or delayed technology predictions.

1. The I-Phone will Fail

Yes folks, in April 2007, Steve Ballmer (former CEO, Microsoft) told USA Today that “there’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. Fast forward to 2015 and the iPhone commands 42 percent of the U.S. smartphone market share and 13.1 percent worldwide. Oops!

2. No one will want a personal computer (PC)

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.

In 1977, Ken Olson, president, chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corp predicted no one would want a PC in their home. Olsen was replaced as CEO in 1992 and the company was sold to Compaq in 1998. While in a state of decline,IDC expects PC sales to total 316 million in 2015.

3. Flying cars by 1944

In July 1924, famous pilot Eddie Rickenbacker wrote in Popular Science Monthly that we would have flying cars within 20 years. 71 years later, the Terrafugiadubbed a “roadable aircraft,” just made its first public flight. It’s the first street-legal airplane that converts between flying and driving modes in less than a minute. The company claims that you can fly into any of 5,000 public U.S. airports, and you can pre-order one for just $279,000. Production begins in 2015.

4. Tablet Deathwatch

Thorsten Heins started a firestorm of bad PR when he told Bloomberg “Tablets themselves are not a good business model.” A month later Heins recanted these comments, saying “We’re interested in the future of tablets, whatever that is.”

Note: As a (then) devout Blackberry advocate, I brought one of those first ##$*&#$ Blackberry tablets, and it stopped charging after a month. Arrr!!

5. Music Subscriptions

In 2003, the late founder and CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs was right about a lot of things, but also stated that “the subscription model of buying music was bankrupt”. Jobs was wrong about digital music’s evolution.

In 2015, Spotify has more 12.5 million paid subscribers and over 50 active users who can listen to all the tunes they want for a flat monthly fee. The new iTunes Radio service will let you skip ads for a $24.99 yearly fee that ties into iTunes Match, but you won’t be able to stream your favorite tracks on demand.

6. Remote shopping will flop

In 1966, Time Magazine predicted that “Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop.” because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, an like to be able to change their minds.”

E-commerce would change all of that, allowing both women and women to browse and virtually try on all sorts of goods before adding them to their digital shopping carts. According to eMarketer, e-commerce sales are expected to top $2.356 trillion in 2018, nearly double the $1 trillion achieved in 2012.

7. Windows Phone will be #2 in 2015

In 2011, 3 leading analyst firms (IDC, Gartner, IHS) predicted that Windows Phone would unseat Apple’s iOS by 2015. Analysts believed, the strategic alliance of Nokia and Microsoft in 2011, would bring together Nokia’s hardware capabilities and Windows Phone’s differentiated platform. They further predicted, by 2015, Windows Phone would be the No. 2 operating system.

8. The Internet Collapse

The co-inventor of Ethernet, Robert Metcalfe told InfoWorld in 1995 that in 1996 “the Internet will catastrophically collapse.” He was concerned about capacity and whether the infrastructure of the web would hold up under ever-increasing demand.

In 2011 Metcalfe also told TechCrunch that there is a social networking bubble. “It will burst like all previous bubbles have.” Watch out, Linkedin!

9. HP tops the tablet market

When HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion in 2010, the platform would be the linchpin for HP’s mobile strategy, starting with the TouchPad tablet. “In the PC world, with fewer ways of differentiating HP’s products from our competitors, we became No. 1; in the tablet world we’re going to become better than No. 1. We call it No. 1-plus.” Not so much. HP would kill off the TouchPad and all webOS hardware just 7 weeks later after staggeringly weak sales.

In 2011, HP chairman Ray Lane (after the Touchpad was discontinued) argued “You cannot develop serious portable applications on Android.”

10.Landlines rule

In 1981, Marty Cooper, then director of research at Motorola, told the Christian Science Monitor why the portable phone wouldn’t replace the landline anytime close to soon. “Even if you project it beyond our lifetimes, it won’t be cheap enough,” Cooper said. “People don’t realize how tied they are to a single place,” he argued.

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the portion of customers relying either exclusively or mostly on traditional landlines will be only 11 percent by the end of 2015.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rachel Rowling .