The way our society is going, everybody seems to want to give it a shot and make it into the gadget world, regardless of having the brains for it or not. These products who are launched with all the enthusiasm at CES or events like the Mobile World Congress, all share one major goal in life: appeal to the masses, generate massive amounts of revenue, and become so popular that people would kill to get their hands on one. All in all, you guessed it, it’s about money and fame. And that money and fame went only to hot tech products.

Nevertheless it’s not easy to penetrate the already crowded and overstuffed market and in 2011, a lot of gadgets and big time companies have made a fool out of themselves for trying. Here’s a few of them, tech failures of 2011. If you think giants like Apple didn’t have their own fails, think again while reading 7 failed Apple products.

1. BlackBerry PlayBook

A couple of years ago Blackberry was considered the best of the best. But now if somebody sees you using one, they are quickly going to assume one of these things: you either got it because it was assigned by the company you work for, you failed to notice the new wave of smartphones which are much faster, have a vast array of functions to perform or you just have the “grandpa” mentality, nothing new is ever good for you. The PlayBook wanted to change all that. But launch day came and went and nobody seemed to notice.

Complaints stared piling up as people started to realize that all the features the BlackBerry loved were missing from the tablet. No calendar and contact software, no ability to organize and folders, were ever found on the device. Then came the total silence and people forgot about it. And Playbook isn’t the single flaw of Research in Motion; the iPhone seems to be winning against BlackBerry phones.

2. The Zune

When at some point this year, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft has unofficially killed the Zune music player, it came as no shock. Zune launched into a maelstrom of iPod fanaticism, in November 2006. Microsoft was right to differentiate Zune from iPod by its shape and colors (yes, even brown) and more importantly its “social” marketing. Zune never got the marketing support needed to establish the brand as viable alternative to iPod/iTunes. Yes, Microsoft did some advertising but not consistently or persistently enough.

Microsoft did keep iterating the Zune – adding things like advanced podcast support – but it never made much of an impression with buyers because the company always tried to imitate the iPod, an established competitor with better hardware selection, more content, a broader ecosystem of peripherals and cross-platform support. Maybe Android media players will have a better chance to fight against iPod, who knows?

3. Sony Ericsson Xperia Play

Sony Ericsson has suffered from a huge marketing catastrophe after failing to target the right demographic for its ‘PlayStation’ device. So it turns out that the device would appeal more to 12 to 16 year olds, not the 20 to 30 olds toward which it is aimed. The problem is that the huge price tag doesn’t fit the small budget of a 12-year-old looking for a good time. The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, codenamed Zeus, is/was a hand console smartphone produced by Sony Ericcson. Under the Xperia smartphone brand running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the device is the first device to be part of the PlayStation Certified program which means that it can play PlayStation Suite games. If you’re a hardcore, you’ll be interested in seeing what are the 15 most expected games of 2012.

4. Flip Videocamera

Just two years after buying the maker of the Flip, Pure Digital Technology, Cisco announced it is shutting down its consumer businesses, including the one-time darling of the tech world, the Flip video camera. Flip took videos, and that’s all it ever did. It focused on one feature and made it very simple: you turned it on, hit record and it worked. Flip had a built-in USB port so you could easily attach it to your computer and download videos. The video files could be read by any computer and easily uploaded to YouTube (which is preferred over TV already).

It was reasonably priced. The future looked bright. And then came the smartphones, and they became a direct threat to Flip. Just about the great camera that the iPhone 4S has. If they had improved the optics and zoom capability, then it would have competed with higher-end camcorders, which have large lenses and better video recording chips and had very high prices until recently. Maybe…

5. The Color App

Photo-sharing app Color debuted not so long ago (or maybe it’s long in terms of tech evolution) and it’s already fading into oblivion. When it first launched, it set the digital-social world on its toes and throwing around words like “game-changer” and “revolutionary.” Color was supposed to become the new M.O. for social networks, a way to concretely combine mobile, location, social, and photo. Maybe it was ahead of its time and maybe it was a whole lot of hype – whatever it was, Color seems dead and buried now. Also the fact that iOS 5’s Photo Stream and Facebook photo app were launched in the midst of Color’s struggle for survival wasn’t exactly any help either.