(tahamaki)
There was a time when many of us got our videos at Blockbuster after shopping for a Sony Discman at Sears, all while talking on our Motorola phone. All of these companies have had their glory days, but now they’re on the U.S. News & World Report’s list of 10 Companies That Have Lost Their Edge.
Here’s a summary of their list, in alphabetical order:
Blockbuster Video: “Blockbuster’s conventional retail outlets seem hopelessly outdated… It’s now chasing its industry instead of leading it.”
Dell: “When the Internet arrived, Dell took off and competitors got whiplash trying to keep up with its skyrocketing sales. But a decade later, Dell faltered as mobile devices began to displace PCs… Dell has countered with mini-laptops, smartphones, and other trendy products, but it’s now following the pack.”
Eastman Kodak: “For nearly a century, no company commercialized the camera as successfully as Kodak… But Kodak’s storied run began to end with the advent of digital photography… Its stock price is now about 96 percent below the peak it hit in 1997.”
Microsoft: “It helped give the PC mass-market appeal, and still dominates much of the software industry. But Microsoft has also fumbled or passed up many great ideas that others capitalized on, like Web TV, E-books, smartphones, and the tablet PC… And sure enough, the market is shifting away from the PCs that Microsoft’s software is designed for.”
Motorola: “Motorola dominated [the mobile phone] business as recently as 2003, when it introduced the trendy Razr, the biggest-selling mobile phone ever at the time. But Motorola failed to focus on smartphones that can handle E-mail and other data, and rapidly lost share to newcomers like Research in Motion, Apple, LG, and Samsung.”
Sears: “In earlier days, Sears put catalogs on the map… and introduced sturdy, affordable brands like Craftsman and Kenmore. But later in life, Sears stood flat-footed as competitors like Wal-Mart, Target, and Amazon chewed up its turf.”
Sony: “Not long ago, the Walkman was as ubiquitous as the iPod is today, and Sony dominated the market for TVs, cameras, video recorders, and many other consumer electronics. But as Sony became a huge conglomerate with film and music divisions, it lost leadership in many of its core product lines… As a result, faster-moving competitors like LG, Samsung, Vizio, Apple… have outpaced this old-school innovator.”
Sun Microsystems: “Its Java programming language, introduced in the mid 90s, became an industry standard just as the Internet arrived, helping make Sun an industry giant by the late 1990s. But the dot-com bust wiped out many of its customers and changed the way companies meet their technology needs.”
Toys R Us: “As it went national, Toys “R” Us drove many competitors out of business and gobbled up others. Then the tables turned, with the once-mighty toy giant suddenly bested by discounters like Wal-Mart and Target, online sites like Amazon, and smaller merchants with better quality and service.”
Yahoo: “Yahoo’s snub of a $45 billion buyout offer from Microsoft in 2008 now looks like a huge gaffe, since Yahoo’s market value has fallen to a scant $19 billion or so.”
What do you think of this list? Do you disagree with its assessment of any of these companies? Which others belong on the list?
10 Great Companies That Lost Their Edge [U.S. News & World Report]
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Woolworth’s anyone???
Companies that have “lost their edge,” but *still exist.*
Um, yeah, I think they might have lost their edge some time before they went out of business 10+ years ago. And TWA just doesn’t have it anymore.
Stay out of the Woolsworth!
They’re in a tight spot!
Exactly. We can list A&P, TWA, Eastern, Braniff (which is still advertised on South Park), Netscape (which is still running on quite a few PCs worldwide), your Woolworth, Montgomery Ward, and soon to be Sears and K-Mart. They all missed the boat or made a terrible decision that cost them the company. Expect more of this in the coming years.
Netscape is still around so to speak – it just exists in the form of Firefox nowadays.
A&P is in an endless state of fail. Even after closing all their stores that weren’t in the NYC, Philly or Baltimore/DC areas, they’re still eating it. It’s not even Walmart’s fault all that much. Shoprite (and to a lesser extent, Stop & Shop) is handing their lunch to them.
That might be on my Grandpa’s list, but the old 5&10 stores died decades ago.
Motorola makes popular Android phones, I don’t have one but I admit they look good. Not sure their inclusion is completely fair.
Generally I find anything from U.S. News & World Report is generally already either well known or extremely limiting on purpose. They’re not the place I go for in depth pieces. Also, that this piece included decade-old companies in with ones as old as the intercontinental railroad shows how weird the mix is.
And Microsoft has the XBox 360, which is huge in its own right (RROD issues aside). Windows 7 redeemed Microsoft, sales a huge, with the 360 and their other projects…
Hell. Microsoft Office is still one of the best and leading office suites even on a Mac (next to Open Office). They’re not the empire they once were, but are no means weak.
Seems weird to see them on this list.
I think sony is the wierd one on this list. They’ve just shifted gears. No point in going into the portable audio market when apple has it saturated. They’ve shifted to other entertainment areas and mobile technology. just because they don’t do what they used to doesn’t make them bad. And they’ve had very little complaints of a product being crappy(erikkson products are the exception here i think)
I wondered why they are on there too. I have a 46″ Sony tv in the living room that I just got. It’s outstanding.
Sony products are by far the best of the comoditized CE business…. Nothing out there can hold a candle to the overall quality of Sony
I beg to differ. Their quality and innovation have clearly declined in the last 10 years. Their glory days strictly lied within the Trinitrons and Walkmen of the 70s/80s/90s.
Motorola is somewhat on a path to a comeback. But there newer android phones, the droid 2 and droid X are plagued by what killed them in the first place. Droid 1 was awesome because they made the hardware and they DIDN’T make the software. Now they are gimping everything with they’re “blur” crap and Blockbuster ads that can’t be deleted. They are going down the same path.
I have a Droid 2. It does have Blockbuster pre-installed on the apps, but it’s not pre-selected on the menus. You have to add it in yourself. It’s very subtle, and I don’t mind that at all.
The Droid2 is a very good phone, and you’ll be happy with it. However, the problem with the Blockbuster app isn’t that it’s “pre-selected on the menus” (trying to figure out what you mean here), but that it’s installed on the phone at all, in a way that makes it impossible to remove. This, coupled with the fact that it’ll routinely run in the background doing… whatever, whether you use it or not, is troubling.
Motorola was on a streak there for a while with the Droid — let’s hope they can recapture it.
The Droid X is by far the best phone I’ve ever used and that is coming from someone who has owned a number S60 phones and and an iPhone. The Blur on the device is not the piece of garbage that is on the CLIQ and is easily taken care of by installing Launcher Pro (something everyone should do on their Android phone). Moto is making a solid comeback and if they keep this up, they’ll have me as a dedicated customer
Jesus tap-dancing Christ you just said “they’re” AND “there” when you meant “their.” You’re supposed to learn the difference in 4th grade.
The Droid is a great phone. If Motorola had lost its edge, I think it’s fair to say they’re making a fierce effort towards a comeback.
The android phones from Motorola are fairly recent though, for a period they were relegated to cheap texting phones while their competition exploded around them. If they had jumped on the smart phone bandwagon from the start they may not have been in that position – but of course Android wasn’t around then which means they would have had to make their own OS probably… so who knows?
I still use my Razr. I’ve dropped it hundreds of times onto hard floors and it’s still barely damaged (a piece of rubber fell off it a while back, but aside from that, it’s basically good as new). Maybe I can’t browse the internet on it, but I have a laptop for that.
Motrola may have taken a back seat in the cell phone world, but they are the industry leader in connected home products such as cable modems, DVRs, and cable boxes… Most everyone has at least 1 product from Motorola in their home… And their clients aren’t fickle end users whom buy 1 at a time… They are companies like Comcast and Verizon that buy hundreds of thousands of units…
Kmart…
Already on the list, in the form of Sears, which owns it.
If you want to get particular Sears does not own Kmart. Sears Holdings Corporation owns Sears and Kmart.
KMart and Sears are the same entity now.
I think they are beyond “Lost their edge” to on their deathbed. Blockbuster is still around in the mail order sense and trying to stay relevant. KMart has pulled out of so many markets I don’t know why they didn’t just end it.
Blockbuster isn’t doing too bad with their Blockbuster Express kiosks. They can get new releases into the machines faster than Netflix or Redbox because they’re using the same distributors that their storefronts used. Had they put the kiosks in front of their stores 5+ years ago Redbox would probably be “Redbox? Ohh, you mean that McDonalds movie thing?”.
Kmart & Sears are just a thinly veiled credit card company. It’s all about pushing credit cards.
I still think that the movie Rain Man killed KMart. I really wish Charlie Babbid had said “WalMart sucks” instead and saved us from the evil empire.
No kidding right? Kmart used to be huge when I was a kid, now you’d be hard pressed to find one in most cities. I went to Wisconsin back in May & went to the Kmart near Waukesha & it was like stepping into another dimension. It was eerily quiet & they had all these wierd brands I’d never heard of, outdated clothing, cheap unfashionable purses, etc. I found a really cute pair of shoes there, but honestly I couldn’t wait to leave.
I work very near that exact Kmart, and yes, it is absolutely surreal. It’s twice as large as the nearest Wal-Mart… yet there are never more than a handful of cars in the lot. I’ve walked through that store for a half hour or more, and saw maybe 2-3 other people the entire time I was there. I have absolutely no idea how that store stays open.
I always love going back to their electronics department and looking at all the zombie brands they carry… White Westinghouse, Curtis Mathes, Polaroid, and the list goes on and on.
Was across the street from a kmart today, for 3 hours, while my car was being worked on.
There were 4 cars in the parking lot in front of the doors and a semi, off in the far corner. No other cars pulled in or out of the front of that lot. The fast food joint by the street had business though.
Yes, it was open. After my car was done, I ran across the street to get something at the fast food place, and checked, in case it was going out of business or something. We found one in AZ doing that (around 8 years ago) and my husband scored enough underwear for 5 years.
The Droid is a pretty solid smartphone… I don’t know if is too-little-too-late for Motorola… but I think their relationship with Verizon will keep them afloat.
I’d add Radio Shack to this list… and any number of newspapers
Was Radio Shack ever that great or did you just like playing with remote control cars as a kid? This is a question I’ve often pondered.
When I was a kid, Radio Shack used to actually carry radios and electronic parts and other actually useful stuff for the electronics geek, but it’s been useless since the mid 90′s.
I was just about to say that.
In high school, I took an electronics class and there were times I would need a capacitor, resistor, or some solder and Radio Shack had exactly what I needed.
Eh, they really didn’t lose their focus until about 7-8 years ago. I worked there from 1997-2000 and it was still a good place to go to for electronics and radio (CB AND ham) parts/equipment.
While I agree that they needed to make better use of their available floor space, that could have been done by getting rid of the TVs, replacement speakers, security systems, etc., that hadn’t sold well in years, instead of trying to push out the small parts business. Yes, there were (very few, by my observation) that didn’t do well in the small electronics parts, but by in large, that’s what brought quite a few people in the store in the first place. RS typically was the only outfit in many towns where you could walk up and grab those kinds of parts without having to deal with a gruff guy at the counter who gets impatient with you because you don’t know exactly what you need, if there was even another electronics parts store option at all.
Disney. The last few years of the Eisner era were downright terrible. Granted they are on a rebound right now, kinda like Dell, but it will take years to see if they can keep the momentum going.
Six Flags. Formerly known for having great theme parks all across the land, now are a former shell of themselves. Their downfall was expanding and buying up properties too fast.
I used to live about 15 minutes from the Six Flags in Jersey. Its a fun park but they started adding way too many extras you had to pay for inside the park. The season ticket was only a few dollars more than a single day pass, but making so many rides cost extra and then adding so many levels of speed pass stunk. I’d usually blow $200 easy on top of the season ticket. Being they were always jam packed I was stunned when they said they were on the verge of going broke!
The theme park industry seems to be one where you just can’t win, customers want new rides every year, but those new rides cost millions of dollars each, and they just can’t make it back in profits no matter how much they charge. The cost of operating a park is also extremely high. If they don’t have a new ride or major attraction every year then attendance declines. I know its hard to believe, but its true.
I would also imagine in park spending is really down in parks, souvenirs, food, games and trinkets is where parks really make their money. But now people are choosing to buy the ticket and do only the things that the ticket includes, bringing their own food and eating in the car and not buying any extras in the park, cutting into parks profits.
When I was a kid, the St. Louis Six Flags was the end all be all of a summer trip. Now it seems people travel easier and there are more amusement parks available. So they just are not rare enough. We also now have so many entertainment options, the experience is just not that special anymore.
Six Flags really shot themselves in the foot when they started slapping extra little fees on everything in their parks. Oh, you have a backpack? Well we took away the bins (or cubbies) at the ride station to leave it while you ride, but you can put some money in our new special ride lockers, which by the way are timed to only work for 2 hours. Enjoy your ride!
This ‘nickel & diming’ strategy is what kills a lot of major attractions. I’ve never actually been to Six Flags, but here in OKC we have Frontier City(which is like a mini-six flags) & it’s been declining for years too. The park is nasty, overrun with thugs & punk kids, and the food is outrageous(SIX DOLLARS for ONE slice of dry pizza that’s been sitting out all day). The rides are old & rickety(the Wildcat is terrifying, not because of the ride, but because it literally feels like it’s gonna collapse any second), and all the good rides(the ones that DON’T cost extra, that is) have been out of commission for as long as I can remember. The water in the log ride is stagnant, green, & smells like an old towel thats been left to rot in the bathroom for a month. I haven’t been there in years but I don’t think it’ll be long before it’s gone. Which is really sad, because it used to be a really awesome, really fun place to go.
frontier city is owned by six flags and six flags corporate is in OKC
I went to a Six Flags park yesterday for the first time ever and I was so amused with the attempt at every.tiny.opportunity to grab a buck. Probably the best was on the Gully Washer boat ride–on the side of it, you could put a quarter in a machine to squirt your friends when they went by. And every ride disgorged us in a gift shop of some type, most of which had a bored teenager sitting behind the register picking her nails. It felt kinda desperate to me.
I am amused by the “Ozymandias Inc.” tag.
I’m said that I didn’t catch that. It’s one of my favorite poems. (I’m not quite sure what that says about me)
I’m also sad that I evidently can’t type sad without failing at it 1/3 of the time.
Yes, if only my value would fall to a “scant” $19 billion or so…
Look at the percentages, not the actual values. If your net worth dropped more than 50%, because of one single decision you made, you’d be pretty pi$$sed.
But there’s no guarantee that the value of Yahoo! wouldn’t have dropped to 19 Billion after MS would have taken them over. The only guarantee is that the Yahoo! shares would have been worth 43 Billion.
Abercrombie & Fitch – but hear me out. They used to be great when they sold outdoor gear. They started to suck when the Limited bought them out.
Ditto Banana Republic. I’m old enough to remember their very cool print catalogs with travel essays, and stocked with travel-friendly, multipurpose clothing that adults could wear. Now, what are they trying to be? JCrew but even more expensive? IDGI
Same story with Banana Republic / Gap.
Agreed. I had an A&F shirt on and my grandfather brought out an old rifle that had Abercrombie and Fitch on the side. He said he got in it Alaska.
I agree with all – A&F, Banana Republic should have stuck with their outdoor / safari/ travel stuff – they had great stuff in their catalogs now it’s hard to find anything like they used to sell anywhere else.
I want to Include Cabelas, they used to sell good stuff now they have gone retail and name brand so their return policy sucks and so does alot of their merchandise. I don’t find the kind of quality or selection they used to have from their own private label. They seemed to have alot more in their catalogs in the past then they do on their website or stores now.
im quitting my job at sun/oracle in 1 day
Oh come on. How about some good news for a change, like maybe a story about companies that used to suck and now suck even worse.
Amazon killed most of them, right?
Being lame certainly doesn’t help.
It’s the Internet age. Making your stores smaller and shrinking your selection really isn’t a bright idea. Toys R Us did this. The local store was smaller and was further subdivided so that most of the store was diapers and clothing. Best Buy and Target has also done similar. All that stuff is going to do is ensure that I go to Amazon more.
B&M retail is pretty much doing their best to wean everyone off of B&M retail.
It’s a shame that we can’t resurrect the companies that ToysRUs ran out of business…
GM anyone?
They are rebounding and their older cars sucked, they are building better cars now like Malibu, 2010 Equinox, and soon Cruze.
Ford is still kicking their ass, AND doesn’t have the massive debt like they do.
What are you talking about? Ford has about $26 billion in debt, from mortgaging all of its assets a few years ago. GM doesn’t have any substantial debt to speak of, due to the bankruptcy last summer. (The $60 billion or so that is the government’s stake in the company is just that, it’s an ownership interest, not a debt of GM. Same as when you buy the stock of a company, you own part of said company. It’s not a debt).
Ironically, because Ford did not require any public financing to stay afloat, it now has the worst credit rating of the three. It’s not even considered investment-grade right now.
I love my Equinox, and I would have never considered a GM car just a few years ago.
I’d say Toyota is doing worse than GM.
Can’t wait to get mine, just placed order; LTZ Mocha steel metallic with brownstone leather, sunroof, and 18in wheels, so awesome!
Had an 06 Equinox. It developed a nasty habit; when it rained a lot and you were driving above 55, the engine would shut off and the rear window seal/hatch seal leaked. I was told nothing was wrong with it repeatedly. After the 4th cleaning/drying with industrial dryers/having the carpet and padding replaced, the dealership finally fixed the seals. Still did nothing about the engine, and in Florida, (well, anywhere actually) having an engine that cuts out is bad. Got rid of that sucker last year.
Funny you say that given that most Toyotas sold in the US are made in the US. Before that was the case, were the products sold in the US so crappy?
I test drove a 2010 Malibu in November of 2009, and it was still typical GM. It handled like a boat rocking on bumps and heeling in turns, had instruments even the salesman couldn’t figure out, poor visibility front and rear, and on top of all this the dealer said the offer was only good for today. This was 4:00 pm in the afternoon and he said I only had until 9 PM for the deal. I didn’t buy the Malibu. I owned Buick LeSabres way back, and the Malibu was pretty much the same.
They missed one – US World and News Report, L.P. They used to publish a weekly magazine, but are now struggling even as a monthly publication.
Life Magazine too…….
zoobooks magazine… just not what it used to be
lmao at zoobooks…that brings back memories. What about Highlights? I picked one up in the doctor’s office the other day and was really disappointed.
Ranger Rick…
Reader’s Digest
i was thinking the very same thing. I subscribe to it, mainly bc I adored it as a weekly. Their analysis of the news was usually top notch. Then it dropped to biweekly…which was still ok. But the monthly version is meh…AND the only way I can get the weekly is to actually log into my e-account.
I’d much rather pay more to have dead tree versions, much like National Review offers its subscribers. Digital only, or digital and print (which is much more expensive).
#11 – US News and World Report. Once an intellegent, thoughtful news weekly. Now reduced to a monthly pub containing nothing but top 10 lists of such important topics as ‘companies that now suck, but didn’t used to’ or ‘best colleges to loose your virginity’.
Yuck !
Radio Shack
I was going to suggest this too.
…when was Radio Shack ever great?
Tolerable, yes. But great?
I used to really like going to Radio Shack back in the early to mid-1980′s — they were much more gear towards those of us who tinkered with electronics.
Radio Shack was great before the internet took off. If you needed a hard to find electronic gadget or part, or especially if you are a big tinkerer, Radio Shack used to be great.
where else could you get an Armitron?
It was fantastic when it was a place that focused on small electronics parts and you could get the stuff you needed for hobby electronics and the staff were knowledgeable and helpful when it came to hobbiest electronics.
It was great when you learned you could reduce mistakes on our tax return with this $130 calculator http://www.datamath.org/Others/RadioShack/EC-100.htm
I actually think the image of Microsoft has been improved a lot recently (around 2009-10. Windows 7, Bing.com, new Office are all pretty competent products, they are almost ….un-Microsoft. I my mine Apple is the new Microsoft now…
You had me right up until you added Office to the list. It is one of the worst products to deploy and support.
What do you use?
Ahh I admit I don’t know a thing about the deploy / support part. However from the perspective of just an user, I had been using OpenOffce since OpenOffice 2 came out, kept using OpenOffice 3 for a while then I switched to Office 2007 at late 2009. No matter how I want to support opensource softwares, I have to say Office 2007 is hugely improved compare with Office XP.
+1.
I feel dirty every time I have to hunting through that atrocious interface to try to find the functions I need, especially knowing how nicely organized and intuitive the older versions were. My F1 key shows almost as much wear as the spacebar these days.
I kind of agree, while Microsoft will probably always be villified, as long as laptops/towers are around there is going to be a market. Also there will always be people like me who dislike smartphones, tablet PCs, and E-books. As for sony however… well no matter how good the PS3 gets it’ll never top the amazing library that the PS2 had so from my perspective as well the company is over the peak.
I’m right there with you… This is a semi-ignorant addition, as they bring up their faults when it comes to hardware, while Microsoft (save for a handfull of items) is a *software* company.
From the Article: It helped give the PC mass-market appeal, and still dominates much of the software industry.
Doesn’t make sense, they are not really in the decline. You cannot necessarily say they are based on Apple’s sudden rise in popularity, mainy from handheld devices and an online store.
The only one I’d maybe question is Sun if you’re using Java as an example of it’s downfall. Java is better than ever right now with the maturity of frameworks like Spring and Hibernate. It’s still the language of choice for most enterprise webapps due to the huge amount of open source support. There really isn’t much competition to it now and nothing really on the horizon that stands to change that soon.
Now if we’re talking about Sun as a commercial software and hardware company I agree . They really don’t have nearly as much market presence they used to.
Hooray4Zoidberg
“There really isn’t much competition to it now and nothing really on the horizon that stands to change that soon.” You are right as long as you ignore the other half of the world that uses .NET.
Or the other half (lol?) that uses open-source. Okay, so maybe not many “enterprises” go that route…
I would argue that Sun shouldn’t even be on the list, because they don’t exist anymore. It’s hard to suck when you don’t exist.
Oracle was very aggressive (and quick) in rebranding the parts of Sun that they cared about (such as Java or VirtualBox) and killing off the parts that they didn’t (such as OpenSolaris).
Because Sun was not left as a self-governing unit, and Oracle immediately and somewhat dramatically changed the direction of many of Sun’s projects, it’s clear than Sun has been completely subsumed, unlike other companies that are bought out but continue to function autonomously.
They’re out to lunch on Sony — maybe their electronics aren’t as high-profile as they used to be, and for good reasons, but Sony’s entertainment holdings are quite a different matter.
Word to the wise, don’t get your investment advice from U.S. News & World Report!
Wikipedia can tell you plenty of reasons why Sony is no longer “great” (if indeed they ever were). Summarily, they’re lying scumbags. Phony movie reviewers, rootkits, spam, and a history of defective hardware is only the beginning.
Toyota should definitely be on this list. They started out great when they made simple cars, but have been sliding for at least a decade. The regular consumer might still think they make quality products, but folks in the auto industry know better.
Dell: I don’t think Dell was ever good. People just didn’t catch on to their suckiness in the beginning.
Motorola: Hmmmm… all companies have ups and downs. I loved all my previous Motorola phones, and am back with them now after a brief affair with Samsung. IMO it’s too early to put them on the list.
Toyota wouldn’t qualify for this list because of the popularity of the Prius. An innovative, high volume selling vehicle that people like and sets an industry standard. Like the quality or not, they’re no Blockbuster
Toyota is still the number one seller of cars in the US.
Dell was the first to allow you to customize your PC. That was a big deal in the late 90′s. Now they suck. My mother has nothing but problems from her recently purchased Dell.
Dell was also given great ratings for their customer service and tech support. Now, not so much. Dude, you’re gettin a Dell.
“The regular consumer might still think they make quality products, but folks in the auto industry know better.”
Isn’t that the exact opposite of reality? Toyota doesn’t make many interesting cars any more (the FT86 being a huge exception when it goes on sale in a year or so) but you can’t make much money off of interesting cars. Even after their slide from number 1 in the world they are still in the top 3 solidly.
This list is about industry leaders who lost track of where they are and failed themselves and their customers, not your personal hatred of beige cars.
For the people crying “why is Sony on this list?”
They used to be an electronics juggernaut, now they have fractured development houses with inwardly competing products and absolutely no clue what people actually want. The new X10 phone coming out soon, rocking an 18 month old build of Android that is incompatible with any newer apps. The PS3 is powerful on paper but gimped by developers not getting any help with programming quirks whereas MS sent out devs to studios and had workshops to help studios make the best games they could on the system; a system that should be lagging behind like crazy due t it’s specs but more than holds its own against the poop sock 3. Why on earth would they have five or six current camcorders, all in the same general price range, all with similar lenses, with different storage formats and dissimilar user interfaces.
Sony’s left hand is trying to commit seppuku but the right hand is doing a sudoku puzzle while the face is watching American Idol and the feet are jogging to opposite shores.
“Isn’t that the exact opposite of reality?”
No. Toyota has been cutting corners and covering up problems for at least a decade now, and the general public isn’t aware of it. They’ll still buy the cars, because the public mindset is stuck back in the 70s and 80s, American cars = bad, Japanese cars = good.
Toyota definitely sucks. Lots of people are gullible enough to buy into their BS, but that doesn’t reflect the reality of their inferior product.
Other than recent Fords, American cars are pieces of crap. Toyota quality has definitely slumped over the last decade but it is still well above any of the Detroit 3. I have no idea what the newer Jeeps will be like but they look promising and GM is kind of starting to build quality products but every time I have thought that in the last 15 or so years an image of various cadavaliers pops into my head. GM is up to the same old lame tactics but with new clothes.
Go back to the UAW.
Sony? Really? Have you not heard of a Playstation. Or Playstation 2? What about Playstation 3? Granted, some may not have heard of it yet because they’ve only sold about 38 million worldwide.
Anyone past their 20′s remembers when the Walkman was the iPod. Sony in the 80′s was Apple now.
Nobody is saying Sony is dead, but compared to what they were…
Imagine 15 years from now, and some new company holds the personal music and entertainment market as completely as Apple does now, and Apple only has the 3rd generation iPad to boast. You’d say the same thing about them.
sony’s name isnt known for the playstation. They made their brand off of high end TVs VCRs the Walkman and basically electronics as a whole. The Playstation was part of their legacy. So, when you think of that, people dont go into stores saying “Give me a sony tv and sony speakers and a sony MP3 player.” Theyre saying, igive me a samsung or a Vizio led tv, some klipsch/polk/other name speakers, and a friggin ipod”…. OR, give me the cheapest thing in stock…
I used to have Sony everything. My first CD player, DVD player and surround sound system were all Sony. I had a 36 inch Trinitron when that was considered a huge TV. My first 5 digital cameras were all Sony. I even owned a purple Vaio laptop at some point.
After going to three stores in one day looking for the particular flavor of Memory Stick my new camera required and not finding it, I returned the camera and bought a Canon. That was about the time the whole rootkit debacle was going on and that sealed the deal for me. All my A/V stuff is JVC now. I own four Canon cameras and the only Sony products I have left are my trusty old clock radio and a boombox that plays Atrac files.
It’s too bad because I miss Sony’s build quality.
The Sony Playstation 3 is lagging in total sales behind the Nintendo Wii and XBOX 360. It’s the sad truth since the Playstation 2 was by far the dominant home console.
I wouldn’t call the PS3 a running success. When it launched, it was basically a failure.
Playstation 2 is nearly 10 years old, and Playstation 3 is a third place console – out of three! You actually picked a fantastic illustration of Sony sucking – PS2 dominated the competition HARD despite having inferior hardware. Then the next generation they take that huge lead they had and squander it with a $600 console that had superior hardware but was way too expensive. Now they’re being dominated by inferior hardware. Even the Xbox 360 is beating the PS3 worldwide and dominating the PS3 in the US despite its design flaw that took 3 years to fix. Sony is fortunate that a lot of people bought PS3s because of that flaw. The only thing Sony really has going for it is soccer and auto racing in Europe and nationalism in Japan. Gran Turismo 5 has probably sold a ton of PS3s despite not even being out 4 years into the console’s life (major fail there, Sony)
I own a PS3, and although I think its vastly better than the xbox 360, sadly no one I know has one. Not having any friends to play with on the PS3, I’ve been tempted many times to sell the ps3 and buy an xbox.
If you think about it its similar to owning a Lexus but selling it for a toyota so you can be driving the “hip” car.
Shouldn’t US News and World Report be on this list as well.
but…the university listings are still relevant?? agree? disagree?
the USNWR university ratings still count, but they are so flawed that it seems that people are paying somewhat less attention to them than they used to. still, they and newsweek are a shell of what they used to be.
M$ is taking a break from being awesome… i think they’re playing the make up game since introducing the laughable Windows Vista setup… I think the 360 will continue to pave the way for them and hopefully the Windows Phone 7 will be a trend setter in the business sector at the least… I immediately saw how serious they were about rebranding themselves when windows 7 came out… much better…
Right now, Apple is killing them in the home arena. M$ needs to find a way to make Media Center a big selling point and say, hey, mac is nice, but can you do this? Can you do that?
Their last ad did kind of do the Media Center thing.
Media Center has a lot going for it. A $60 DVR with no recurring fees (for locals only) is one heck of a deal!!! The $60 is the ATSC/ClearQAM tuner.
Dell is probably the single most purchased computer still, at least for home users. I can’t think of another brand, maybe HP that has quite the saturation that dell has. In other area’s, yes they have probably been sliding, but if you want a Desktop or a Laptop, they are still a major player. Also dell’s website is not to ignore if you are looking for a deal, sometimes they have very good deals on electronics and video game systems.
Toys R Us has definitely been sliding, since pretty much the only time people shop there is before Christmas. They used to be THE store for Toys and Video games and a trip there was truly magical if you were a kid during their peak era. If people need toys year round, they go to Target or Walmart whom have pretty much all the big name toys that Toys R Us has and at lower prices. Buying a toy is really nothing special anymore, there isn’t one single destination you go to get one like there was in the past.
haha remember going down the video game isle and seeing which games still had tickets left over? And getting mad when a ticket wasnt there? lol
Dell Q&A is pretty poor, especially for their capacitors.
That was a large number of PC manufacturers, not just Dell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
Whoever bought boards from the company who stole a formula and sold cheap (Dell, HP, Intel, Apple) was in for the ride as well.
Dell slipped from #1 to #2, and is now ranked #3 behind Acer.
Acer and Lenovo as the underdogs are growing share where HP and Dell are losing share. Apple is the only other PC vender that has had share growth consistently these past few years.
All Lenovo has to do is buy a couple of smaller, emerging market based pc vendors and they will push Dell to #4… and they’ve been pushing hard to buy some smaller companies in the past couple of years.
Lenovo stopped being an underdog when IBM sold them the thinkpad/thinkcenter line of machines. Thinkpads are hands down the BEST laptops on the market.
Ehh, while not taking away from Apple’s success (I may not enjoy the stuff myself, but I couldn’t possibly steal their thunder) their main growth has been based upon Mp3 players, phones and various devices + a rich online store that is hard to beat (especially when their devices rely upon it).
Their numbers are bolstered by devices that, while other companies like Dell and HP are trying to jump in, only serve to fluff the numbers.
Oh yeah, and if we are talking computers, might as well add Gateway in there, in the mid to late 90′s they were pretty much the computer king, now where are they? You don’t even hear the name anymore.
Gateway got too big and then forgot its roots. The first mistake was to leave South Dakota for the big city (San Diego). The second mistake was dumping the cow boxes. The third mistake was not being competitive in the government contracts (such as Desktop III – V with the Air Force).
Remember when Gateway opened a bunch of stores? We had a Gateway store here in Davenport, IA that was open for about a year roughly 10 years ago. And I shit you not, it is STILL for sale.
I forgot about that one. Yeah, that was a huge mistake.
Remember when Gateway led in innovation and particularly how its advertisements set the standard for the industry. Everyone in the color section of Computer Shopper copied their style.
Yup, there was a Gateway store here, you didn’t see a Dell store, just a Gateway one, which is why I called them the computer king back then (that and I had a Gateway, it was my first computer).
I think Gateway got bought by Acer. Acer doesn’t make fantastic products. I own one of their laptops. It does the job I need it to do but I wouldn’t call it a phenomenal piece of hardware.
Acer actually makes some pretty impressive stuff, but you won’t find it at Walmart or Best Buy – they only sell the cheap low end computers at retail.
That said everyone thinks Acer is an emerging power but they have been around since the ’70s and I owned an Acer in the early ’90′s.
I think you mean Gateway 2000… which is you ask me was an entirely different company. They were awesome until they buried themselves releasing that Destination HTPC system, which was sort of ahead of it’s time. They were too small of a company to support the failure of that product. After Christmas the year that thing released, their tech support lines had people on hold for over 24 hours.
Really… See, I think Gateway 2K died because the cow spots went out of style and they didn’t have a new gimmick. Running on gimmicks is not a great long term business plan. But it was the 90s.
North Face
Do you mean the South Butt? I get those two confused.
You win the Internet.
How about Wall Street Journal? (Fallen mightily since Dow Jones sold it).
I am getting tired of the Karl Rove editorials
Yes, but they’re part of the Faux News empire now and have shifted further to the right. Mind you, the WSJ was always right leaning (its a newspaper for banker and investment types), but now its gone to the Faux News propaganda level. That will likely help its overall circulation, given the political demographics, but they may lose some of their old readers who want to know the news with some objectivity so they can make financial decisions. If its hard to tell what’s opinion/editorial from news, it’s makes more difficult to make a (presumably) objective financial decisions.
I’m not sure about their losing older (in the sense of “born a long time ago”) readers, since Fox News’ demographic is one of the oldest on television, and the conservative movement in general tends to skew old. They might lose a lot of the longstanding readers, though, I don’t know.
it’s the only newspaper with increased circulation each of the last 10 years or so. not sure how that qualifies it as a failure.
i would have to agree, while I weep that it was sold to News Corp, the Wall Street Journal has done very well financially and circulation wise. Not a failure by any means.
Cable TV companies – Time Warner, Comcast, etc.
Amazon.com; it is now filled with merchant slime ($63 for Mario Kart DS?? Windows 98 for $119?!?!) and review trolls.
You still find some great deals, but you can end up neck deep in scum.
That’s mostly the 3rd party sellers, the problem is that Amazon got so big people think they can get 10x the amount their item is worth by selling it there. The actual Amazon, aka products sold only by them is great. I rarely buy from a 3rd party on Amazon, if ever.
Yeah, real Amazon still kicks ass. Good prices and hassle-free return policy.
Some of the merchants are OK, like for CDs, they can be cheaper than Amazon even with shipping costs associated.
Quite a few are trying to scam some uneducated/desperate consumer though. Amazon was out of PS3s for a couple weeks, and the merchants were trying to peddle the 120 GB PS3 for like $400 because of it.
When was Dell “great”? Sure they made cheaper computers back in the day but I can’t remember a time where the machines weren’t shoddy and their customer service a nightmare.
I beg to differ about Motorola — maybe they don’t have the market share they used to, but their design of (and marketing of) their Droid phone is part of the reason why Android is enjoying the boom it is today. It turned an OS that was known only to geeks into a household term.
…and then turned around and, in cahoots with VZW, neutered the very OS that brought them back into the spotlight. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Droid X, but I’d rather be able to dictate what is installed and running on my phone at any given time.
While Kodak is fading, at the moment anyway, with consumer products, their industrial photographic film business is still booming (90% of the movie theaters world wide still use 35mm film, X-Ray film, etc).
Kodak also owns a vast number of patents for the technology in all our digital cameras and computer printers, making them money while letting other companies do the work of selling.
Unlike other dinosaurs, Kodak invested heavily in new technology, and regularly sells off old technology products when they are no longer sufficiently profitable.
Microsoft: Douchebaggery of the 90s cost them all their geek cred. It wasn’t cool for geniuses to work there anymore–and they didn’t
Motorola- Comeback possible with the latest Droid phones. Real iphone competitors they are.
Starbucks
eBay
+1
I am with you on that one. Jumped the shark big time.
Kodak has certainly lost some marketshare, but I think that they have found their niche in Consumer Digital Photography. They make extremely simple, easy to use (set it on a dock, press a button and print your photos) digital cameras. These are the perfect cameras for people (like my parents) who have stuck with a simple 35mm point and shoot film camera because it had 2 buttons, Power and the shutter.
Their printers claim to be more economical to run, and again, because of their simplicity appeal to a certain niche audience.
They also make a lot of high end professional printers that can deliver high quality digital prints almost instantly.
Looking back to the 1980-1990s when they were getting their @$$ handed to them by Fuji and the flops of the Disk cameras, and losing the lawsuit against Polaroid for their Instand film cameras, they have come a long way at moving the ship in a completely new direction.
Perhaps I am just biased having lived less than 5 miles from Kodak Park in Rochester, NY for my entire childhood.
That, and they also seem to do a brisk business in photo printing; snapshots, cards, calendars, gift knicknacks. I occasonally use their Kodak Photo Gallery for prints, Christmas cards, etc.
I actually have an issue with saying Toys R Us lost to Amazon. The last time I tried to buy something online from Toys R Us, it was though an Amazon portal. Of course that was a few years ago, but I still don’t think Amazon had much to do with Toys R Us. Also I still go to Toys R Us when I want to see a large selection of toys in one place. Wal-mart & Target each have some selection of toys, but not as big a selection.
I would take Dell and Microsoft off the list and replace them with IBM (at least from a comsumer standpoint) and Radio Shack.
Radio Shack is a poster child of abandoning a niche market and trying to compete in a much larger pond.
Used to be you could reliably find three things at RS: 1. informed staff, 2. components, tools, and resources for tinkerers and DIY repairers, and 3. cheap electronics and A/V supplies.
But now all an RS is good for is cell phones and overpriced electronics goods. I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that an RS is no longer a great place to find a cheap, basic technology accessory. I went into an RS two weeks ago to get a MicroUSB cable. They had one type and it was $13. A few days later I was at a T-Mobile store (not even an electronics store!) and snagged one for $5. When a cell phone store can beat RS at price, you know they’re in trouble — doubly so considering RS is a cell phone store now.
Newsweek/Time. These rags today are so thin. Newsweek sold for a dollar. I am now laughing at the awkwardness of the 50 billion Obama covers and the epic “We’re All Socialists Now” cover.
Toys-R-Us.
The only thing I can find at Toys-R-Us are toys from Disney/Nickelodean characters plastered all over them. If you don’t want anything with Buzz Light Year or Lightning McQueen, then don’t bother entering the store.
Pretty much every toy these days is licensed, its hard to find something that isn’t and those that aren’t are cheap store-brand junk toys that just break after 5 min. But around here they don’t have anything more than Walmart and Target have in their toy departments when it comes to actual toys.
They seem to be more focused on selling baby products, since a large section of the store, previously occupied by toys, is now being taken up by baby clothes, diapers, food and other baby products and no we don’t have a Babies R Us store here, this is the regular store called Toys R Us.
They have bikes and sporting goods, but Walmart and Target have those too, basically Toys R Us has turned into its own version of Walmart.
Another problem is that there is less demand for actual toys these days, since kids 7-8 years and up are already clamoring for iPods and video games, leaving toys in the dust when previously the manufacturers were able to sell toys to that audience. No girls play with dolls past 8 years old and boys stop playing with toys as soon as they discover video games (at least its that way around here). There are only so many toys that the manufacturers make that are current and Walmart and Target seem to have that covered, unless the stores carry back stock of older toys which they won’t because no one shopping in retail wants those.
I haven’t liked Microsoft since 1988 or so. The last product of theirs that I consistently liked was the BASIC interpreter in the ROM of a Commodore 128. DOS was crap. Windows is crap. Don’t even get me started about their server software like SharePoint.
I don’t hate Microsoft for their success. I don’t really hate them at all, I just think their products suck and are holding back the computer industry. PHBs are attached to them, though, so they continue to dominate, perverting the function of the market.
I’d have to disagree with: Dell, sure they’ve got the worst tech support around but their computers are not all that bad. Microsoft, Windows 7 nuff said best OS ever. Sony, sure they might not be as innovated these days but they still make great products.
Didn’t Dell get a shellacking by the FCC or some government run group over knowingly selling computers that were going to fail in 5 months?
No different than MS Xbox 360 debacle.
Radio Shack. Last time I was in there it was like the “Cheese Shop” sketch in Monty Python.
I don’t shop at radio shack anymore, every time I go in there they try to force batteries down my throat and want WAY to much information just to sell me a breadboard.
Sun doesn’t just suck, they’re dead. Oracle bought them and are busy destroying anything that was left.
Roses…the store.
GC Murphy
CNN
Yup, CNN’s appetite for infotainment and close to shill expert soundbites plus branding Headline News as HLN is lame and trailing down the suck path…
Yeah, I had no clue what HLN was on my channel listing, figured it was a shopping network or something, so it always got bypassed.
Now I know… and it will still always get flipped past.
Microsoft is not going anywhere, most consumers still use microsoft based PCs, and more importantly almost every corporation uses microsoft products
Microsoft now licenses Windows7 per machine. You don’t get desktop plus laptop. Transferring your license from an older pc to a newer model is nearly impossible.
All this comes after the Vista failure – Remember when it was called ‘Longhorn’?
I beg to differ on Motorola. The Droid X is the best smartphone out there by far. It puts the iPhone 4 to shame. So I would dare to say they’re on the cutting edge right at this moment.
When I was a kid, I remember going there if I wanted to get that harder to find He-man character (for example). Now, when I take my kids to Toys R Us, the selection kinda sucks. We end up going to Wal-Mart for the harder to find action figures.
What, no American Apparel on the list? Considering their recent difficulty in filing with the SEC and huge losses, I think they could be here. They have a large market share in selling to screen printing companies and had a good concept for a business but Dov Charney’s lack of management skills and lawsuits are killing them.
Sears killed their catalog and mail order just as people were adopting to the specialty mail order and catalog trend (early 1990s). If they had kept their catalog business and figured out how to streamline it then they would have been at a good jump off for the internet. They focused too much on static brick and mortar stores without moving the stores to different properties as communities changed and new places advanced in population.
Sears also kept its captive credit cards only in its stores way too long- also into the 1990s.
I think that Sears/Kmart only stays alive because Wal-mart doesn’t want any monopoly lawsuits…
I miss the Wish Book. I really, really do.
“And sure enough, the market is shifting away from the PCs that Microsoft’s software is designed for.”
Really? No one is buying Windows 7 based computers anymore huh?
I showed my parents the iMac and they love it. I get far fewer complaints about it than I ever did when they had a PC.
I’ll be using Windows XP and Ubuntu for now. Why would anyone want Windows 7?
Something about it being supported in the next 6 months and getting regular anti-virus updates vs. XP being technically unsupported.