Product Obsolescence

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What Does Product Obsolescence Mean?

Product obsolescence refers to the time and state in which a piece of technology or product ceases to be useful, productive or compatible.

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Product obsolescence may occur when a company stops producing, marketing or supporting a sold or developed product.

Techopedia Explains Product Obsolescence

Product obsolescence is an estimation of the end of a product’s operational lifecycle. Generally, product obsolescence is measured before or during the product development phase and is estimated using past and future technological and industry growth statistics.

In computing, hardware and software become obsolete once they are superseded by newer, better versions. For hardware components, computing power, internal architecture, memory speed and other related parameters become factors used to evaluate product obsolescence criteria, whereas for a software product, enhanced functionality, security, platform compatibility and operating system (OS) support are used to evaluate the operational lifecycle.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.