When a product reaches the end of its lifecycle there comes a decision point. A business is left to decide whether to reformulate, repackage or reintroduce, or to discontinue their product. What are some examples of products that have been discontinued? Do you believe it was the right choice to discontinue the product, or was there something that could have been done to extend it? What would you have done to turn the fortunes around of that particular product?
Mr. Barrett's Marketing Class 
One type of product that is constantly being discontinued is laptops. Companies will market laptops in stores branding them as a new better version of an older obsolete model. But very soon after in the coming months the company will design a new computer again and the one that sold in stores will fade into obscurity.
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Products such as iPhone 4 or iPhone 5 and blackberry phones are no longer continue selling in the market, because better phones invented such as iPhone 7 and 6s become popular in the market. Blackberry are facing decision point because their phones are no longer could compete to Apple’s phones.
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A product that was discontinued was the Cisco flip, a pocket sized camera that shot up to an hour of video. The cisco flip was discontinued in 2011. I agree with the company discontinuing the camera because smart phones are easier to use
and everyone has them.
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Mac makeup discontinued a certain shade a lipstick. I think this was a bad decision because costomers who always use that certain shade of lipstick are now left angry and upset and now need to find another shade that they might not like as much! If the shade of lipstick wasn’t selling very well, then they should of advertised the shade more.
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Apple discontinued their 32GB iPhone. I think this wasn’t a good decision because some people didn’t want to pay for so much storage they weren’t going to use and now they have to.
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Most electronics get discontinued at some point because technology improves all the time and the old once get replaced.Like the old Iphones and unpopular products.Blackberry is one of them because more people buy Apple and Samsung phones.
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Vine was an application that has very recently announced to be discontinued. I do not believe that vine should have been discontinued because it was a very entertaining app that I used from time to time, but realistically their are other applications that are in major competition with vine like Instagram and Facebook so it was hard for them to stay relevant. I think Vine should have added new features and updated their app regularly to keep relevant but instead Twitter only focused on their main app and Vine naturally died.
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One product that was discontinued is floppy disks. Floppy disks were huge for computer programs in the 90’s but fell off as technology increased and improved. You could see this coming as people figured out to put more data on CD disks, this allowed easier and faster data transfer. The only way this product could have been saved is by making the data transfer faster than those on a cd or off the internet or make them a smaller size.
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One recent example of a discontinued product would be the Blackberry’s OS 10 devices. The reason being is that Blackberry phones can no longer compete with the modern models from Apple and Samsung. Blackberry’s phones were meant to be for “work”, and their keyboards are easier to type than the touchscreen keyboards found in other brands. However, when other products are becoming more and more functional, where in many areas even surpass the Blackberry ones. I think it was the right choice because there is no way that blackberry phones can compete with the other brands in the future. But there are ways to improve its fortunes. First of all, Blackberry can make the phones’ screens larger. Secondly, Blackberry can get rid of its keyboards. And thirdly, Blackberry can lower its price to attract more consumers.
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Products such as iPhone 4 or iPhone 5 and blackberry phones are no longer continue selling in the market, because better phones invented such as iPhone 7 and 6s become popular in the market. Blackberry are facing decision point because their phones are no longer could compete to Apple’s phones.
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Blockbuster, and Blackberry phones have both been discontinued although blackberry couldnt have been saved due to it just not being a new and exciting company. Blockbuster could’ve probably saved themselves by doing memberships instead of paying by how many things you rent you could pay $15 per month and it would’ve been much better since they actually get new movies in stock they could’ve done with less stores as well.
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Products that have been discontinued due to lack of sales the white MacBook, Kindle DX, and the iPhone 3G. These product all got discontinued due to the lack of sales. Why didn’t they sell? Because a newer, better product got made. There is no point of extending a product’s lifetime if a better alternative exists, it is simply better to just create a new one.
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An example of a product that has reached that have been discontinued is the flip phone. For this specific product I think it was the right choice, because technology was evolving and leaving key boards behind, making this product not desirable anymore. There wasn’t much to change to make this product desirable, because the Apple imperium was about to take over, and whatever phone that didn’t had a touch screen would not be bought.
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twinkies at one point was discontinued, luckily they picked back up. i believe it was the right decision so that people would miss them and buy more once they were re-introduced.they maybe could have made different twinkies and/or snacks, i feel that i wouldn’t do anything different and just re-introduce them back into the world in order to want them back and sell more.
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There have been a few discontinued products, notably blackberry phones, Oreo o’s, and Hershy’s bar none chocolate bar. These products were all extensions of a particular brand, and I believe that it was smart for them to pull them if the sales were too low or if they were losing money from it. If I had to save the product and turn it around, I would implement more promotion and advertising to make the products more well known, and I would make sure that the advertisements were engaging and effective.
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A product that is being discontinued are the black berry phones. It was the right choice because the phone with a keypad and significantly smaller screen cannot compete with the phones that are being produced that have huge displays, crystal clear resolutions, and loads of added features.. The blackberry phones lacked many high end specs that competitors like Samsung, Apple, and HTC specialized in. As a result it failed to appeal to tech savy people. Blackberry did try to enter the smartphone competition but failed to do so because by the time they entered it the market was already being dominated by big names such as Samsung and Apple. Their smartphones also lacked many specs such as a high megapixel camera and high screen resolution that competitiors focused on. I would have tried to focus more on the adult demographic instead of trying to appeal to teens that liked the keyboard for texting. If Blackberry entered the smartphone game earlier and produced higher quality phones their compnay may still be popular.
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Apple Newton.This was Apple’s first take on a handheld organizational device. It used a stylus and handwriting recognition software to capture notes, orchestrate your calendar, and look up contact information.
There are a number of theories surrounding why it was discontinued. It had several flaws — the writing recognition dictionary contained only 10,000 words, for instance. The most reasonable seems to be that Apple was in financial distress and had to make cuts where it could.
I think it was a good idea to discontinue the product because ut wasn’t a good product and they learned from their mistakes and made a better phone devise.
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writing machines are a good examples and i think it was a good idea because the companies understood that computers would have replaced them so they evolved and gave up on writing machines and some kept selling them until people totally stopped buying them and some other decided to start producing computers.
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Some examples that have been discontinued are blackberry, typewriter and tamagatchee. I believe it was the right choice because they were nothing for them to do and they are more newer and updated products that are faster. I think the company should’ve have kept up wth updates like every other product has been doing and do more promotions.
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Most technology reaches the decision point because technology keeps improving. So far example, typewriters were once in the decision point before they were discontinued. I believe that it was the right choice. There isn’t anything you could’ve done to turn the fortunes around because technology is continually improving.
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A product that was discontinued that was a very popular one, was Polaroid film. The technology for taking photos had developed rapidly in the 2000’s and the smartphone movement was just starting to become huge. The need for film was getting smaller and smaller as the years went by and photos were being taken on newer cameras that were using SD cards to store photos. This meant that the companies producing film began to phase it out, and in 2008, Polaroid stopped producing film. The film is available for purchase these days at incredibly high prices on eBay and other online stores. It made sense, as it was expensive to produce, but it was sad to see it go. There was no real way to save the product as it was simply not able to compete with the technology it was up against.
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