Planned obsolescence

Planned obsolescence refers to manufacturing or marketing techniques generally designed to artificially shorten the life of a product, either by making it actually useless, or appear useless before it would naturally. There are several similar but subtly different types of planned obsolescence.

It should be noted that most of these types of obsolescence can and do occur naturally, without any intent to create the obsolescence. Obsolescence may be the result of true progress in developing industries such as the computer industry.

Types of Planned Obsolescence

• Obsolescence of function: This refers to when an item is produced to break down or otherwise become non-functional in an abnormally short period of time. It may also refer to cases where an item is rendered non-functional but where the item itself still works: e.g. the creation of a new cell phone network that is incompatible with earlier cell phones.

• Obsolescence of style: This refers to the the obsolescence of items such as clothing, fashion accessories, and home decorating products due to changes in style. For example, if the fashion trend is for high skirts, low skirts will be rendered stylistically obsolete. In some cases, style changes are so great that old styles would look out of place or ridiculous.

• Technical obsolescence: This refers to the obsolescence of an older item caused by the creation of a newer item performing the same function, e.g. a digital camera that takes higher quality photos. While the older item still performs the function in question, it is comparatively inferior to the newer item.

Other Examples

One of the most egregious examples of planned obsolescence is the rechargeable batteries commonly contained in small electronic devices such as MP3 players, PDAs, and some cell phones (such as the iPhone).