Osborne Effect - Other Examples

Other Examples

In 1978, North Star Computers announced a new version of their floppy disk controller, which had double the capacity, to be sold at the same price as their existing range. Sales of the existing products plummeted and the company almost went bankrupt.

When Sega began publicly discussing their next-generation system, barely two years after launching the Saturn, it became a self-defeating prophecy. This move, combined with Sega's recent history of short-lived consoles, particularly the Sega Mega-CD and 32X which were considered ill-conceived "stopgaps" that turned off gamers and developers alike, led to a chain reaction that quickly caused the Saturn's future to collapse. Immediately following the announcement, sales of the console and software substantially tapered off in the second half of 1997, while many planned games were canceled, causing the console's life expectancy to shorten substantially. While this let Sega focus on bringing out its successor, premature demise of the Saturn caused them financial problems. Even though the Dreamcast did address many of the problems with the Saturn, Sega's bad reputation caused customers and publishers to be skeptical and hold out, which led to its demise as well.

Technology writers have criticised Nokia CEO Stephen Elop for the decision to move away from Symbian and MeeGo mobile software platforms to Windows Phone 7, as an example of the Osbourne Effect. On top of this criticism of existing products was compared to the Ratner Effect and the "Elop Effect" was coined to describe the combination of both premature announcement and negative comments on existing products.