A List of iPod And iPhone "Killers" Who Failed

Apple Inc. was once the David against the Goliath that was Microsoft, but in just over a decade it’s become public enemy no. 1 to makers of personal computers, mobile phones and portable music devices, among others. While most companies have learned that to declare a public tech war on Apple is akin to shooting themselves in the foot, a few brave souls have certainly tried and the results have not been pretty.

Who: Sim Wong Hoo

Occupation: CEO of Creative Technologies

Weapon of Choice: Creative MP3 players

Apple Product That Got His Goat: iPod Shuffle

Fighting Words: “We're expecting a good fight but they're coming out with something that's five generations older. It's our first generation MuVo One product feature, without display, just have a [shuffle feature]. We had that — that's a four-year-old product. So I think the whole industry will just laugh at it […] it's worse than the cheapest Chinese player. Even the cheap, cheap Chinese brand today has display and has FM. They don't have this kind of thing, and they expect to come out with a fight; I think it's a non-starter to begin with.” - January 2005

Result:

Share price of Apple vs. Creative over the last 5 years

Who: Roger McNamee 

Occupation: Founding partner of venture capital firm, Elevation Partners

Weapon of Choice: Palm Pre (Elevation invested US$325 million in Palm)

Apple Product That Got His Goat: iPhone

Fighting Words: “You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later. [...] Think about it -- If you bought the first iPhone, you bought it because you wanted the coolest product on the market. Your two-year contract has just expired. Look around. Tell me what they’re going to buy.” – March 2009

Result:

Source: TechCrunch

Who: Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan

Occupation: CEO of Fusion Garage

Weapon of Choice: JooJoo

Apple Product That Got His Goat: iPad

Fighting Words: “Joojoo has a much larger screen, 12.1 inches instead of 9.7 inches. The resolution is 1368 by 768 pixels instead of 1024 by 768. There are an extra 300 pixels of length, so it’s 16:9 widescreen resolution instead of 4:3. Watching video on it is a joy. And the Web browsing experience is even better than the iPad, because of the size of the screen. Joojoo also supports Flash Player while iPad doesn’t.” - February 2010

Result:                         

In April 2010, a month after the launch of the JooJoo, Fusion Garage sent an email to its buyers seeking feedback on the tablet. In a moment of stupidity, Fusion Garage typed all their customers’ email addresses in the CC: field rather than the BCC: field and promptly revealed their entire customer base. All 64 of them. Since then, Rathakrishnan has said that sales of the JooJoo have been "encouraging".