Product life cycles are getting shorter and shorter. By one estimate, 50 percent of a typical company’s annual revenues are derived from products launched within the previous three years. Long-term cash cows—products that stay in a company’s portfolio for many years—are becoming a thing of the past.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the consumer electronics industry. For example, Apple Inc. has rolled out six generations of the iPad since it introduced the tablet computer back in April 2010. In fact, the fourth-generation iPad came out just 7.5 months after the third.