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Ars Technica's 2019 'Deathwatch' List Includes Essential and 'Facebook Management' (arstechnica.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the Ars-me-mateys dept.

The editors of Ars Technica have announced their annual "Deathwatch" list, identifying "companies, tech, and trends least likely to succeed in 2019." An anonymous reader quotes their report: The past year has been an absolute freefall for Essential.... The market was ultimately not impressed with the Essential phone, and the fire sales started almost immediately. Only two months after launch, the phone got a permanent $200 price drop, to $499. November saw deals as low as $399. Eventually, the $700 phone was discounted all the way down to $224, thanks to a mix of poor sales and a lack of consumer confidence in the company. A poorly selling phone was one thing, but things really started to look bad for Essential in May, when it was announced the company had cancelled the second generation Essential Phone. The first device took such a toll on the company that it was considering selling itself, and suddenly the future of Essential was in doubt.

While the phone was dead, in May the company said it was focusing on an upcoming smart home product and operating system. But by October, it announced that it was cutting 30 percent of its staff, and the company was pivoting away from smart home products and would try building a phone again. It will re-sell you a missing headphone jack, though. Essential's next phone -- if the company lasts that long -- is supposedly "an AI Phone That Texts People for You" according to Bloomberg. That sounds awful. On top of all that, Essential's CEO and founder Rubin has been the subject of a major sexual misconduct controversy at Google.
They also write that 2019 "is going to probably determine whether Facebook's management team will continue as it is -- or whether there's a stockholder rebellion, or a government lawsuit, or some combination of both that drives CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others out."

Also on their "Deathwatch" list are Snap, and Verizon's "AOL/Yahoo Frankenstein" -- but not Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. "As much as we'd love to plop Goop on the 2019 Deathwatch, it is still just on our Deathwatch wish list. Goop is, in fact, thriving."

2 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Postmortems of the overlooked? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think the biggest tech failure of 2018 was Theranos.

    Here is a list of 25 other tech flameouts. I never heard of most of them.

    Outside of tech, I think the biggest failure was Sears.

  2. How accurate were their past lists? by Solandri · · Score: 5, Informative
    I always like to cross-check with past performance to see if a list is actually the result of good research, or just an opinion piece disguised as journalism.
    • 2018: Uber, Twitter, Faraday Future, LeEco, Net Neutrality, HTC, SoundCloud
    • 2017: Yahoo, Yik Yak, Twitter, Theranos (kinda obvious), HTC, Gearbox Software, Blackberry
    • 2016: Yahoo, HTC, Blackberry OS, Groupon, Rdio and Tidal
    • 2015: No results on Google
    • 2014: Radio Shack, Blackberry, HTC, Zynga, AMD

    So how good is their track record?

    • Radio Shack (2014) - bankrupt 2015, 1 year after placed on list
    • Blackberry (2014, 2017) - still around, but effectively dead since they no longer make phones as of 2016
    • HTC (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018) - still around, though its market share has dropped below 1%
    • Zynga (2014) - still around, seems to have stabilized since 2014
    • AMD (2014) - still around, best performing stock of 2018
    • Yahoo (2016, 2017) - swallowed up by Verizon in 2017, so premature call in 2016, full credit for 2017
    • Blackberry OS (2016) - killed in 2016 when they ceased making phones
    • Groupon (2016) - they had a bad 2016, but were in the black in 2017
    • Rdio and Tidal (2016) - Rdio died 2016, Tidal was swallowed by Sprint in Jan 2017, so we'll give Ars credit for this one
    • Yik Yak (2017) - died 2017
    • Theranos (2017) - died in 2018, kinda obvious it was dead
    • Gearbox Software (2017) - still around, though I can't find recent financials
    • Uber (2018) - still around, but took massive losses (-$2.8 billion) in 2018
    • Twitter (2018) - as much as I hate twitter, they seem to have recovered in 2018
    • Faraday Future (2018) - still around but looks likely to die this year
    • LeEco (2018) - still around but on life support, will give Ars credit for this one
    • Net Neutrality (2018) - dead, but kinda obvious
    • SoundCloud (2018) - still around, but still losing money, and expected to keep losing money through 2019

    Final tally:
    7 correct
    3 premature by one year, one obvious (Radio Shack, Yahoo, Theranos)
    9 wrong
    4 unknown (Gearbox, Uber, Faraday Future, SoundCloud)

    So they're batting around .500. Not exactly stellar.