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The Osborne effect is a term referring to the unintended consequences of a company pre-announcement made either unaware of the risks involved or when the timing is misjudged, which ends up having a negative impact on the sales of the current product. This is often the case when a product is announced too long before its actual availability. This has the immediate effect of customers canceling or deferring orders for the current product, knowing that it will soon be obsolete, and any unexpected delays often means the new product comes to be perceived as vaporware, damaging the company's credibility and profitability. The term was coined after the Osborne Computer Corporation, in which the company took more than a year to make its next product available and eventually ran out of cash and went bankrupt in 1985. Pre-announcement is done for several reasons: to reassure current customers that there is improvement or lower cost coming, to increase the interest of the media and investors in the company's future prospects, and to intimidate or confuse competitors. When done correctly, the sales or cash flow impact to the company is minimal, as the revenue drop for the current product is replaced by orders or completed sales of the new product as it becomes available. However, when the Osborne effect occurs, inventories increase and the company must react by either discounting or lowering production of the current product, both of which depress cash flow. The Osborne effect is an example of a self-defeating prophecy, as the announcement of the new product is ultimately responsible for its own abandonment, though in general older products lose sales when newer, superior products from the same company come to the market. ==Description== The Osborne Effect states that prematurely discussing future, unavailable products damages sales of existing products. The name comes from the planned replacement of the Osborne 1, an early personal computer first sold by the Osborne Computer Corporation in 1981. In 1983, founder Adam Osborne pre-announced several next-generation computer models (the "Osborne Executive" and "Osborne Vixen"), which had not yet been built, highlighting the fact that they would outperform the existing model. A widely held belief was that sales of the Osborne 1 fell sharply as customers anticipated those more advanced systems, leading to a sales decline from which Osborne Computer was unable to recover. This belief appeared in the media almost immediately after the company's September 1983 bankruptcy: Osborne reacted by drastically cutting prices on the Osborne 1 in an effort to stimulate cash flow. But nothing seemed to work, and for several months sales were practically non-existent. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Osborne effect」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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