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WhatsApp is a good example. Also Skype, Netscape, IE. All dominant at one point and eclipsed due to bugs and poor management.

> one example where I think the stability/quality of the software really did play an important role is WhatsApp

The interesting part is, WhatsApp is built using a dynamically-typed language whose guiding principle is to "let it crash." Your code will have bugs so plan accordingly.

A contentious example: Windows?

Microsoft had a features-first mindset, which led to a Swiss-cheese-manifold of bugs and security flaws.

The result was that you couldn't install anything without risking a virus.

Businesses went with browser based solutions to avoid that risk.