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Yeah I wouldn't say it failed its just that there wasn't a financial motive to move towards IPv6. As more networked devices and the device data itself becomes important moving to IPv6 will follow. Residential ISP's and some cloud providers are the biggest hold-up as most mobile carriers already dual stack and Tier 1 transit providers have had IPv6 for at least a decade or more.

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I wonder if part of the incentive problem was that the companies with the most traffic would have already invested heavily in securing sufficient IPv4 address space for their usage. If so, the ones with the most ability to influence everyone to swap over would be the ones with the least need to do so, and then the smaller players who might need IPv6 most for future growth wouldn't have enough users yet to incentivize the infrastructure changes needed.

Yes this is a good observation. They would also be the first to be on the lookout for good deals on IPv4 space, furthering their acquisitions early on before the IP address market took off. Most notably though they would also be the companies working or providing suggestions on needs based policies for their respective RIR.

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