Few products have arrived with more hype than the Segway. Before anyone outside a small circle had seen it, a leaked book proposal had investors predicting it would be the fastest company ever to reach $1 billion in sales. Steve Jobs was reported to have said it could be as big a deal as the PC. Its inventor, Dean Kamen, said it would be "to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy."
The engineering lived up to the hype. The market didn't.
~140,000
SEGWAY PTs SOLD IN NEARLY 20 YEARS
At launch, the company expected to sell 50,000 to 100,000 units in its first 13 months. When production ended in July 2020, lifetime sales were about 140,000.
The timeline
- 1999 — Segway Inc. is founded to commercialise Kamen's self-balancing technology. Development reportedly costs around $100 million.
- December 2001 — The Segway PT is unveiled at about $5,000. The annual sales target is 40,000 units.
- 2003 — About 6,000 units have been sold.
- September 2006 — Around 23,500 units have been sold, and every one of them is recalled over a software fault.
- 2009–2015 — The company changes hands three times, ending with Chinese scooter maker Ninebot in 2015.