Microsoft's Product Failures in the Marketplace

Microsoft’s Commercial Failures
Microsoft is a company that has had a great success in the market. Windows is a top-tier software used by people and companies around the world (Kim, Cho, Park et al., 2016). Its video game console is celebrated by analysts, gamers and the gaming industry (Murnane, 2018), and its entry into the cryptocurrecy market with Ethereum has been lauded (Timmerman & Thomas, 2017). However, for all of its success, Microsoft has had plenty of commercial failures as well. This paper will examine some of Microsoft’s product failures and discuss why they failed.
One of the biggest product flops to come from Microsoft was the Zune, which was put out into the marketplace in order to rival Apple’s iPod. In this case, Microsoft was behind the curve and Apple had already cornered the market with its deft combination of iPod with iTunes and, essentially, all other Apple products. With Zune and Zune HD, Microsoft offered nothing new and essentially came with none of the “cool” factor that Apple was oozing at the time with its novel, nifty and very neat new product line. In terms of innovation, Microsoft was simply piggy-backing on the backs of its betters, hoping to get a share of the market. It did not and Zune was quickly consigned to the digital dust heap of the tech industry (Smith, 2012).
Another commercial failure was Windows Me. While Windows has been a stable product for years and the success of Windows 98 was meant to usher in the new Windows Me, this commercial bomb was apt to be unstable and users complained it was full of bugs. Microsoft would pull the product after a year and would go on to offer consumers much better fare with Windows 2003, 2007 and so on. Windows Me simply failed to live up to expectations and was not programmed sufficiently well to meet the needs of its users. Those bugs were eventually fixed, but this was one rushed product that should have stayed in development.
Microsoft also tried to get into the smart phone market by making a hybrid product that was like a cross between a Blackberry, a flip phone and a smart phone. This quasi-smartphone, known as the Kin, was an expensive failure for Microsoft: it absorbed almost a billion dollars of investment and two years of development—and then it was only offered in the marketplace for a mere 2 months by Verizon (Smith, 2012). Its poor sales, poor interface, and poor appeal made it useless in an age of social media and hyper-cool products already being sold by Apple and other, hipper smart phone developers.
Windows Vista was another product that failed to wow users. Like Me, Vista was supposed to build on the success of the previous Windows model—in this case, XP. It failed because it got rid of too many nice functions that users liked and replaced them with functions that no one wanted. Windows returned to giving the customer what the customer wanted with the latest Windows model, but Vista was a lesson in how innovation can be too innovative, especially when it’s in a direction no one wants the product to go.
Microsoft has also failed when it comes to developing a web browser. Internet Explorer 6—IE6—was hated by Internet users, had security flaws that made it unsafe, and was even blasted by popular tech magazine PC World as “the least secure software on the planet” (Tynan, 2006). IE6 has been scorned and left behind by other, better stronger browsers like Chrome, Epic, Firefox, Tor, and many more.
In terms of developing a simple interface for users, Microsoft has even struggled. It introduced Microsoft Bob in the mid 1990s in hopes of appealing to novice computer users. Bob did not last long. Meant to replace Windows 95 as an interface that could guide new and first-time computer users (most consumers in the 1990s), the product came off as corny, childish and, ultimately, useless.
Then there was Windows Mobile, which went in the opposite way of Windows Vista. If Vista was too innovative, Mobile was simply not innovative enough—which goes to show that even a company like Microsoft can struggle to find the right balance. Windows Mobile had a poor web browser, a lackluster interface, and did not meet the high levels of quality user experience that the Apple iPhone had already set (Worth, 2016). Again, with Mobile—as with Zune—Microsoft struggled to keep up with Apple, and the end result was that Mobile went the way of the Zune.
In conclusion, Microsoft has had had a lot of successes—and a lot of failures. For the most part, its commercial failures have resulted from a lack of foresight into what consumers wanted and expected in a new product. Oftentimes, Microsoft had simply fallen behind the curve and was just trying to keep pace with competitors, which resulted in hackneyed, uninspired products that did not offer anything new and appeared to be little more than knock-offs of premium brands that came with great options and a definite cool factor. Microsoft has succeeded in delivering products that popped with cool (like the Xbox), but in many cases it has delivered its fair share of duds. Out of those failures, however, have come some lessons that helped move the company forward and develop products that consumers could actually appreciate—like Microsoft Phone, which came out of the failure that was Microsoft Mobile.
References
Kim, D., Kim, Y., Cho, S. J., Park, M., Han, S., Lee, G. S., & Hwang, Y. S. (2016). An
effective and intelligent Windows application filtering system using software similarity. Soft Computing, 20(5), 1821-1827.
Murnane, K. (2018). 2018 could be a great year. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinmurnane/2017/12/27/2018-could-be-a-great-year-for-microsofts-xbox-one-x/#48d4ef1b42ba
Smith, K. (2012). Here are 8 of Microsoft’s worst product flops. Retrieved from
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsofts-biggest-product-flops-2012-9?op=1
Timmerman, K., & Thomas, M. (2017). Ethereum: More than'the new Bitcoin'.  The
Proctor, 37(5), 26.
Tynan, D. (2006). The 25 worst tech products of all time. Retrieved from
https://www.pcworld.com/article/125772/worst_products_ever.html
Worth, D. (2016). Top 10 Microsoft flops. Retrieved from
https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2459606/top-10-microsoft-flops-and-failures-windows-phone-windows-8-and-internet-explorer