Lesson 1 · ~6 min
Planned Obsolescence.
Before talking about how to make hardware last, it is worth asking why so much hardware fails so quickly. The answer, for many decades, has been planned obsolescence: the deliberate design of a product so that it stops being useful within a chosen time window.
In this lesson you'll learn what planned obsolescence is, the three main forms it takes today, and how regulators are starting to push back.
Where it started
A bit of history
The most famous early example is the Phoebus cartel of 1924, in which the major light-bulb manufacturers — Osram, Philips, General Electric and others — secretly agreed to deliberately shorten bulb lifetimes from around 2,500 hours to 1,000 hours. Bulbs that lasted longer were fined out of the cartel; engineers who designed for durability were sidelined. The cartel formally ended in 1939, but the practice it institutionalised did not.
By the late 20th century, planned obsolescence had become baked into how consumer electronics are designed and marketed. It is rarely as crude as the Phoebus bulbs anymore — modern obsolescence hides in subtler design choices, often justified as "engineering trade-offs."
Exactly. The cartel cut bulb lifetimes from ~2,500 hours to 1,000 hours and fined member companies whose products lasted too long — the textbook example of built-in obsolescence.
The cartel's defining act was shortening bulb lifetimes from ~2,500 to 1,000 hours, not pricing or standardisation. Their internal documents — discovered decades later — show fines for bulbs that lasted too long.
Three flavours of planned obsolescence
| Type | How it works | Examples in IT |
|---|---|---|
| Built-in (physical) | Components designed to wear, break or become unrepairable within a known timeframe. | Glued-in batteries, soldered RAM, proprietary screws, no available service manuals. |
| Software (functional) | Devices remain physically capable, but software updates make them feel slow, or drop support entirely. | iOS / Android updates that slow older models, Windows version requirements, drivers no longer signed. |
| Perceived (style) | The product still works, but is marketed as 'out of date' through cosmetic refreshes or social pressure. | Annual phone refresh cycles, accessories that change shape every generation, status-driven marketing. |
Most modern devices combine all three. A smartphone with a glued-in battery (built-in), receiving fewer updates than its hardware can handle (software), and visibly older than the new colour line (perceived) is the standard pattern, not the exception.
Right. Software obsolescence is one of the most common patterns: the hardware is unchanged, but the OS now expects more of it. Apple paid €25 million in France in 2020 over exactly this pattern with older iPhones.
The hint here is that the device 'still works fine' physically — it slowed down only after a software change. That's the textbook signature of software obsolescence, not physical wear.
Watch — the EU view, in 5 minutes
Correct. The 2015 French law was a pioneering precedent. The EU Right to Repair Directive (2024/1799) builds on it — making post-warranty repair a consumer right across all member states from mid-2026.
The French 2015 law is still in force and has been strengthened (the 2020 anti-waste law added the repairability index). It directly influenced the 2024 EU Right to Repair Directive, which takes effect across the EU on 31 July 2026.
Why this matters for the rest of the course
Connecting the dots
The rest of the Foundations path shows you the why-not: why hardware could last much longer if we let it, and why the four R's are the practical answer to a century of throwaway design.