In ID school you fail if your designs suck; in the real world you can fail even if your designs are good. Once you're sharing project space with engineers, marketers, interface designers, accountants, et cetera there are a lot of opportunities for product failure, as seen in this "Worst Phones of All Time" slideshow.
The title's a bit of a misnomer as it only goes back to 2004's failed iPaq H3615, but it's fun to look through and try to figure out what went wrong with each doomed product. And from snap-on keyboards to Mommy and Daddy call buttons, it's interesting to see what choices the designers of these ill-fated products made—or had thrust upon them by one of the other branches during what was presumably a contentious conference room session.