4. AT&T Picturephone
The year was 1970 when AT&T (known as Bell Telephone back then) introduced their first commercial for their new product, Picturephone, which was kind of a video phone. Although the product benefited from a big promotional push, it was entirely not successful.
The price was a big part of the problem, because AT&T charged $160 a month, or nearly $1,000 today, for equipment and service, and in addition there was a per-minute call rate.
Also, given that Picturephone was intended only for person-to-person calls, its usefulness was very limited. So, in 1972 production stopped after only a few units sold.
Still, AT&T was determined not to give up on the idea of video calling, so, in 1982 it tried to launch a business teleconferencing service, and 10 years later it tried to sell the VideoPhone 2000 model for home use, but once again without any success.
