2025: The End of “Vaporware”

The technology innovation cycle is unforgiving. Every January brings a new wave of bold, game-changing promises, but only a handful survive the hard reality of the market. By the end of 2025, we are not only celebrating the real progress of generative AI and edge computing—we are also witnessing a quiet “great purge”: the collapse of vaporware, those products and trends that generated massive media hype but failed to deliver tangible results.

The term vaporware refers to software or hardware that is publicly announced but never actually materializes, or that, once released, turns out to be a major disappointment. In 2025, the economy of expectations ran head-on into technical feasibility and real-world consumer adoption.

Consumer Smart Glasses: The Delayed Big Leap

One of the biggest letdowns has been the slow adoption of consumer-focused smart glasses (AR/VR). Despite meaningful advances in miniaturization and processing power in devices launched in 2024 and early 2025, mainstream consumers have largely stayed on the sidelines.

According to Counterpoint Research’s year-end report, while the B2B (enterprise) augmented reality segment grew by 40% in 2025, consumer smart-glasses sales increased by only 15%, well below initial forecasts that anticipated a breakout in the second half of the year. The strongest use cases remain concentrated in niches such as gaming, professional training, and industrial design, confirming that these technologies have yet to make a successful transition into everyday use or widespread social interaction. High prices, reliance on external hardware, and limited battery life remain the main barriers, keeping the segment largely confined to early adopters.

Disillusionment with Non-Financial Web3 and Blockchain

While blockchain solutions in finance and asset tokenization have continued moving toward regulatory maturity, Web3 applications in areas such as traceability, digital identity, and other enterprise use cases have stalled.

An analysis by the European Patent Office (EPO) for 2025 shows that while blockchain-based fintech patents have remained stable, patents in areas like logistics and the public sector fell by 9%, signaling a slowdown in innovation for non-financial applications. The main reasons cited are the lack of interoperability between different networks and the difficulty of integrating blockchain with the legacy ERP systems used by large corporations. Many projects that once promised to transform supply chains or data ownership remain stuck in pilot phases, unable to achieve the scalability or corporate adoption required to be considered true market successes.

Lessons in Technological Caution for 2026

The 2025 purge makes one thing clear: hype alone is no longer enough to sustain technology. The market now demands immediate, demonstrable value. Investment has clearly shifted toward multimodal generative AI, which has delivered measurable productivity gains for businesses. The push for profitability has forced organizations to cut projects that lacked a clear product-market fit.

The technology lifecycle is a constant reminder that true maturity usually follows a far slower and more pragmatic path than the one promised in keynote presentations. The lesson for 2026 is straightforward: survival depends on delivering real value that solves concrete problems—not on unfounded ambition.