Gallery: The Hail Mary Products of Desperate Companies
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When the chips are down and it looks like a company is on a one-way trip to shutdown town, you often see a Hail Mary product. It's the long shot, the one thing that could save the company. Sometimes it resonates so well with the masses that the company is saved from oblivion. Sometimes, even the best products can't stop the inevitable. BlackBerry is the latest company making an all-or-nothing play. The company formerly known as RIM has struggled to remain relevant, let alone relive the glory days of yore. After shedding the management team and introducing a brand-new platform, BlackBerry has introduced its flagship Z10 phone running the new BlackBerry 10 mobile OS. It's a great bit of kit, actually. The touchscreen phone strays from BlackBerry's strength, which was the physical keyboard. It's a gamble to lure the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to work crowd with a phone that appeals to the typical user. We'll have to wait to see if the gamble pays off. For the hard-core keyboard enthusiast, the Q10 will launch in April. Until then, BlackBerry is betting it all on the Z10. Here's a rundown of the Hail Marys thrown by other companies. *Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired*
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It's hard to believe, given its absurd success, but there was a day when Apple was doomed. That day was in 1998. It's inventory situation was a mess, with too many products and none of them sexy. According to Steve Jobs, the company was [90 days from bankruptcy](http://archive.is/20120720/http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/06/02/steve-jobs-90-days/). The status quo wasn't working. After his return in 1996, Steve Jobs began slashing products (RIP Newton, printers and the Performa line) and focused with laser-like intensity on the the iMac in 1998. It marked a return to the all-in-one form factor of the original Macintosh, and provided (literally) a much-needed burst of color in the otherwise drab PC market. Following its release in August 1998, Q4 results showed revenue dropped from $1.61 billion to $1.56 billion, but Apple still saw a net profit of $309 million — the company’s first annual profit since 1995. It was a huge turnaround from the loss of almost $1.05 billion in 1997. Wrapped in the translucent Bondi Blue shell the iMac redefined the new Apple. A company that took existing products and made them beautiful, easy to use and worth standing in line for 48 hours.
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Windows Vista was a train wreck. Coupled with Apple's rise in the desktop and laptop market, Microsoft's incredibly dominant market share didn't seem so dominant. Although it was billed as the successor to the popular Windows XP, Vista was a disaster. It's high system requirements meant it ran slower than XP. It's use of DRM and graphical elements had some making comparisons -- good and bad -- to Apple's OS X, and at $400 for Vista Ultimate, it wasn't exactly cheap. Vista became the whipping boy of the tech world. Microsoft saw the problem and set to work. Instead of trying make another upgrade leap, Windows 7 was more of a refinement of Vista. Redmond tweaked the operating system to make it move faster, while enhancing usability and functions. By returning to the core of what makes an OS great, Microsoft saved itself and its dominate position in the desktop market with Windows 7. It launched Windows 7 the day before issuing rather bleak 2009 Q1 results. Revenue had declined 14 percent from the year before. Windows 7 helped turn things around. Second-quarter results from January 2010 showed revenue jumped 14 percent from the same time the previous year.
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Palm owned the PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) world in the early 2000s. Then it turned its sights on the phone market with handsets like the Treo. That worked well enough until the iPhone came along. And then it all went bad. It wasn't that Palm was blindsided. It moved far faster than Microsoft or RIM to respond, creating an excellent mobile operating system. WebOS was Palm's answer to iOS, and the Palm Pre was the answer to the iPhone. When it launched it June, 2009, it became the fastest selling phone in Sprint's history. The problem was, Palm had no answer to Android. What's more, the first Pre suffered from hardware issues including the janky wiggling sliding keyboard, a plastic screen that scratched easily and power buttons that stopped functioning. Palm was acquired by HP and WebOS development has been to pushed as an open source which means you'll probably never get Instagram on your old Palm Pre.
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The original Star Wars trilogy was awesome. The second was... not. Episode's I and II were just plain bad. We'll put aside the matter of Jar-Jar Binks and ask if something so incredibly awesome as the Force should be determined by something that sounds like a prescription drug that treats hives (Midi-chlorians). And *Attack of the Clones*? Sigh. The name alone should have tipped us off that it would be best to wait until the movie was available for rental. But Revenge of the Sith made you believe in the Star Wars universe again. Anakin becomes disenfranchised with the Jedi order while simultaneously making babies with Padmé. He even lets Emperor Palpatine kill Mace Windu. Someone actually kills a Samuel L. Jackson character? Now *that's* drama. But wait. There's more. Anakin becomes everyone's favorite man in black. Padmé dies while giving birth to Luke and Leia. And it's the last we see of Jar-Jar. In fact, Jar Jar is barely even present in the movie. That in itself is enough to make this movie the best of the prequel trilogy.
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The introduction of the Porsche Cayenne was the bitterest of pills for Porschophiles. But the best medicine often tastes -- and looks -- awful. Like the blockbuster erectile dysfunction drugs that help fund cancer research, the massive profits from the Cayenne SUV helped finance the creation of the best sports cars on the planet while making Porsche one of the most profitable automakers of all time. When the Cayenne was unleashed on the world in 2002, you could taste the tears of thousands of Porsche die-hards bemoaning the death of the brand. And then it started selling. A lot. The Cayenne accounted for more sales than nearly every other model combined, and even the Cayenne's fiercest critics couldn't deny it's a superlative machine. Even the hybrid version is pretty freakin' sweet. Even on tarmac-friendly performance tires, the Cayenne's off-roading abilities can't be questioned. Add in an ultra-luxe interior, seating for five and more cargo capacity than any Porsche has the right to have and its fate was sealed as the market embraced bigger, bolder and blingier rides. If you love the Boxster or aspire to a 911, you've got the Cayenne to thank. And history repeats itself. Porsche's first sedan -- the Panamera -- is outselling its SUV sibling, ensuring a steady stream of ultra-focused performance cars for the decades to come. *- Damon Lavrinc* *Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com*
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The Game Cube, Nintendo's first optical-media console, was introduced in 2001 and could not keep the company from losing console market share to the Sony PlayStation. It looked like the former king of the consoles would soon follow Sega into oblivion. Then in November 2003, Nintendo teased a handheld device with two screens, one of them a touchscreen. It sounded insane. Why would a video game system need two screens? The little console that could also was backward compatible with Game Boy Advance games, featured built-in Wi-Fi *and* PictoChat, a chat application with beamed images you've drawn to your friends. The DS launched in November 2004, and Nintendo eventually sold more than 900 million units. Compare that to the PlayStation 1, 2 and 3, which have sold 326.89 million units combined. Now if only Nintendo could do that again with the Wii U.
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Oh Motorola. What will become of you? Now that Google has gobbled it up, anything Motorola releases could be considered a Hail Mary product. So, Motorola, if you have a phone -- any phone, we aren't picky -- now would be a good time to launch it. Maybe it'll be the rumored [X Phone](http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_x_phone_render_surfaces_some_more_specs_added-news-5757.php). The phone could be announced at Google I/O in May. Whatever it is, with news that the company is [laying off 10-percent](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324128504578347311150486142.html) of its workforce, it needs a turn around product fast.
