The Worst Product Flops of 2012

Daily Finance

There's been no shortage of successful product launches in 2012 -- think iPhone 5 and "The Avengers." But sometimes, no matter how many months a company invests in development or how many millions it spends on marketing, a new product can fall flat on its face.

This year's most noteworthy flops had to meet a few key criteria: the rollout had to be expensive, the product had to fail quickly (none of these were on the market for more than a few months before tanking), and the failure had to represent a significant hit to the company's reputation, if not its bottom line.

Sometimes the culprit was avoidable mistakes -- Apple Maps, one of the worst flops of the year by any measure, was riddled with egregious flaws such as mislabeled buildings, streets and even cities. Sometimes it was competition from more popular rivals, as in the case of Sony's Playstation Vita, which had trouble competing with Nintendo 3DS (never mind smartphone and tablet gaming). And sometimes it was pricing --Intel's Ultrabook was widely panned as too expensive, especially with more people taking advantage of cheaper mobile options.

Here are the highest-profile product flops of 2012.