The Problem of component obsolescence has been around for as long as the electronics industry, but it has become a more serious concern in the last decade. In a technology sector in which rapid progress is the norm, new generations of components succeed the previous ones in only months, anc manufacturers cannot keep every variant of every generation in production indef initely. As the demand for each variant drops below economic viability, the component disappears from production in a more or less orderly fashion. The UK's COG (Component Obsolescence Group) estimates that across the industry, manufacturers withdraw some 2000 components every month. The electronics industry's problem has always been that it designs products whose life cycles regularly far exceed the life spans of the components inside them.
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