If you don’t know product life-cycle, your products will die in marketplace like Motorola and Yahoo.

Understanding product life-cycle helps startups, business owners, UX designers, and marketers know which stage they are so that they won’t give up early, have more confidence to make any decisions, and have plans to expand lifespan of products.

Like human beings, products have life cycles.

Product lifecycle:
Development – Intro – Growth – Maturity – Decline
Human lifecycle:
Fetus – Baby – Teenager – Adult – Elderly

In the first stage (Development): Product is just an idea as a Fetus in mother’s womb. At this time, the product is not launched yet. The idea still undergoes research and development such as market research, product development, pricing, analyzing competitors, etc.

In the second stage (Introduction):
The product is now released in market after numerous iterations as the baby is born after spending 9 months inside the womb. The target in this phase is increasing brand awareness to customers/ users, not gaining profit. The companies test products in real world and get feedback. This stage helps business shape its future.

In the third stage (Growth):
More people know about product, and buy it. The numbers of sale are steadily increasing, which provides the company more customer and sale data for further business decisions. It looks like the baby who rapidly grows up into child and then teenager with changes in body and behaviors. From just a seed in mother womb, now baby becomes an independent human who can walk, run, and jump.

In the fourth stage (Maturity):
At this time, sales volume of business is maxed out and stabilizes as human beings are fully developed in physique and characteristics. However, in terms of product, its profit margins start to shrink due to higher numbers of competitors in market.

In the last stage (Decline):
After adult stage, human beings step into elderly phase where they face serious health challenges such as heart disease, cancers, or diabetes. In the same way, the product face other competitors’ success. It means they may lose market share and begins to decline.

To make an idea become successful business in market, as well as keep that success live long for decades, every startups and companies need great product managers who have all essential knowledge and skills to lead their products go well through above stages

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