Getting first doesn't mean much if you don't keep up with innovation. Just look at Xerox, Kodak, Nokia, Blackberry... Plenty of companies have had good products but were then outpaced by people who took what they did and made it better, cheaper, whatever.
Most of the example you cite were not outpaced by the competition in the same market - they missed the boat when their tech space got disrupted by a completely new and different alternative to their product.