Top 5- THE Worst Pridictions

Posted by On December - 13 - 2008

Made by tech czars and some of the biggest names in their fields, these predictions have gone way off the mark. In fact, some of them have gone so awry that they are read like a `joke’ today.

Here are the 5 that have been the worst of the lot.

Sir Alan Michael Sugar, the founder of Amstrad, said: “Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput.” As for iPod, In October, Apple set a record for iPod sales outside of the always lucrative holiday quarter. The company sold more than 11 million iPods.

There’s just not that many videos I want to watch,” said Steve Chen, a co-founder of YouTube, in March 2005. At the time YouTube featured about 50 videos.Recently, Collins Stewart LLC analyst Sandeep Aggarwal estimated that the video site will generate $180 million to $200 million in revenue this year. And, Aggarwal predicts YouTube’s revenue will double next year to about $400 million.

In 1933, after the first flight of the Boeing 247, a plane that could hold ten people, a proud Boeing engineer reportedly said, “There will never be a bigger plane built.”
Similarly in 1904, Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, said “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”

In an internal memo in 1879 Western Union Co said, “telephone” has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”

“(There’s) no need for a computer in the home,” these are the words of Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp made in 1977.
Incidentally, he was not the first one to predict such a thing. Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM reportedly said in 1943, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”