#5 Sony

What it had: Ruled the roost in the world of portable music.

What it missed: in 80s Sony invented the walkman, the toast of music lovers, and company’s inroads in to portable music. The company brought out the Discman, the first portable CD player, and thought obvious that the company will pull off the digital music players too, which did not happen. The company’s devotion to file format hindered the possibility of digital music players for MP3 format for many years. Early products from Sony made users to use messy software to turn digital data to file format, which seemed so retro even at that time. People just got migrated to portable audio players compatible with digital formats, instead going on with tedious job of converting data for different formats. If the company kept up, only iPod wouldn’t have been called awesome.

#4 Palm

What it had: First to come up with netbooks.

What it missed: Announced in 2007, Palm’s Foleo was the first netbook to be introduced. It was something between Smartphone and laptop, size you can carry anywhere, good battery life, and low price tag. It is all awesome, but the dismay by public towards the product at first glance, which was more of bewilderment than actual dismay, made company to retrieve itself in to the shell. If only it stuck on, the big was waiting just around the corner. Just after a month, Asus brought up Eee PC, a netbook based on blueprints of Palm’s Foleo, a big success.