>This smacks of poor coordination/planning rather than planned obsolescence,

I expect they get super-special company plaques at the awards ceremony for pulling a machine screw out of the design so 'beneficial' will be driven by a spreadsheet showing the warranty end-date.

I bought a PS3 to do Cell development and got the BSOD a little over a year later, it's practically the only electronics product I've had outright fail on me so Sony is still on my enemies list.