Word.ws English Dictionary

Osborne effect

Osborne effect proper noun: the phenomenon whereby the premature announcement of a new product leads customers to cancel or defer orders for the existing product, since it will soon become obsolete.

Proper noun

the Osborne effect

  1. The phenomenon whereby the premature announcement of a new product leads customers to cancel or defer orders for the existing product, since it will soon become obsolete.

Origin of Osborne effect

In reference to the Osborne Computer Corporation, a company that took more than a year to make its next product available, and eventually went bankrupt in 1983.

Questions about Osborne effect

What does Osborne effect mean?
Osborne effect means the phenomenon whereby the premature announcement of a new product leads customers to cancel or defer orders for the existing product, since it will soon become obsolete.
What part of speech is Osborne effect?
Osborne effect is a proper noun.

Words near Osborne effect in the dictionary

  1. Osbaldeston
  2. osbipy
  3. Osborn
  4. Osborne
  5. Osborne County
  6. Osborne effect
  7. Osbornes
  8. Osbornes Flat
  9. osbornite
  10. Osbourn
  11. Osbourne

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Osborne effect (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Osborne effect.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/osborne_effect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.