In hardware, the strategy for keeping product families high-tech and competitive are next generations of product –line platforms for product model families – based on radical innovation of a next generation technology.
However, when the twenty-first century began, the cassette player Walkmans became obsolete-replaced with MP3 players. Apple would innovate an integrated MP3 player, the IPOD, and Internet-based music downloading service, ITUNES. This Internet-enabled and integrated hardware and software service would become the new product for the delivery of music. Sony apparently failed to envision the new technical world of the Internet and the new business opportunities it would make possible – a failure of technology and business strategy.
New basic and substituting technologies may obsolete planning for next – generation product lines based on an older technology about to be made obsolete.