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Concept
End-of-life product
Summary
An end-of-life product (EOL product) is a product at the end of the product lifecycle which prevents users from receiving updates, indicating that the product is at the end of its useful life (from the vendor's point of view). At this stage, a vendor stops the marketing, selling, or provisioning of parts, services, or software updates for the product. The vendor may simply intend to limit or end support for the product. In the specific case of product sales, a vendor may employ the more specific term "end-of-sale" ("EOS"). All users can continue to access discontinued products, but cannot receive security updates and technical support. The time-frame after the last production date depends on the product and relates to the expected product lifetime from a customer's point of view. Different lifetime examples include toys from fast food chains (weeks or months), mobile phones (3 years) and cars (10 years).
Product support during EOL varies by product. For hardware with an expected lifetime of 10 years after production ends, the support includes spare parts, technical support and service. Spare-part lifetimes are price-driven due to increasing production costs, as high-volume production sites are often closed when series production ends. Manufacturers may also continue to offer parts and services even when it is not profitable, to demonstrate good faith and to retain a reputation of durability. Minimum service lifetimes are also mandated by law for some products in some jurisdictions. Alternatively, some producers may discontinue maintenance of a product in order to force customers to upgrade to newer products.
In the computing field, the concept of end-of-life has significance in the production, supportability and purchase of software and hardware products. For example, Microsoft marked Windows 98 for end-of-life on June 30, 2006. Software produced after that date may not work for it. Microsoft's product Office 2007 (released on November 30, 2006), for instance, is not installable on Windows Me or any prior versions of Windows.
Official source
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