That's a mighty ironic title. You see, the
tech
didn't fail at all, far from it! It's only those particular
products
that didn't make it bigand even that isn't exactly "failure". Let's look:
1.
Apple Newton

• This product was simply too costly and too proprietary to be competition to the
  Palm Pilot
  that it was a copy of. While the
  PDA
  in general was only moderately successful, once the technology advanced to be able to merge a cellphone with a PDA, the
  smartphone
  was born. And in case you didn't notice, they're a runaway success.

Sony Minidisc

• I had one.
  The minidisc was an inexpensive alternative to the
  Digital Compact Cassette
  , a product that
  really
  bombed after the RIAA attacked relentlessly. But the
  technology
  behind the Minidisc is still winning today. Minidisc was among the first to use
  lossy compression
  , which is the same technology that
  MP3
  music uses. Although not successful in volume, Sony's ATRAC is still considered one of the best lossy compression algorithms around. And those tiny
  3" optical discs
  are still a handy alternative when a 5" disc is just too big to carry. Maybe not a runaway success, but success nonetheless.

Virtuality

• Do I really need to say that
  virtual reality
  is YUGE these days? It was a product ahead of its time, but the
  tech
  is burgeoning today.

Video CD

• First of all, I should point out that
  VCD
  was
  a runaway success in Asia, so this claim is completely false. And the
  MPEG-1
  compression scheme led to
  MPEG-2
  (used in the
  DVD
  ),
  MPEG-4
  ,
  H.264
  (used in
  Blu-ray
  ) and more advanced codecs. Not a failure by any measure.

WebTV

• Once again a product ahead of its time. I had one of these too. And just as VR is hot today, OTT (over the top) boxes are
  smoking!
  Services like
  Netflix
  ,
  Hulu
  and yes,
  Amazon Prime
  video are revolutionizing how we watch "TV". And
  boxes from Roku, Google and Amazon
  are the Next Big Thing today. If you went to NAB this spring, you know what I'm talking about.
  In conclusion, Ed Oswald needs to get a clue.