I keep meaning to produce some linkbait, and a list of great computer flops might work. Well, it appears to be working for the Real World blog with 10 Biggest Computer Flops of all time.
This is probably not the worst top 10 of its kind. However, it does include some things that didn't flop at all (CP/M, Windows Me) while not mentioning mention Windows 1.0 or 2.0, and the list also misses a long string of hardware flops.
For example: 3DO, Amstrad PenPad, Apple Cube, Apple Pippin, Atari Falcon, Be BeBox, Coleco Adam, Commodore CD32, Commodore Plus 4, DEC Rainbow, Elan/Flan Enterprise, Go, Netpliance i-Opener, Oracle's Network Computer, Osborne Executive, Philips CDi, Sinclair QL... There are probably a few dozen more, including some from Acorn and Psion that a US user might well miss.
Of course, it's not obvious how you measure a flop, but I think it's something to do with the discrepancy between the size of the launch and the intensity of the marketing hype and the resulting sales. That's what makes the Apple Newton and IBM PCjr into classic big-time flops. Even though they probably outsold many other failed products, they never came anywhere near the overinflated expections.
