Marketing & Life-cycle of Hi-Tech Products

There are two versions of the technology adoption lifecycle model. The original version (introduced in 1957 at Iowa State College) describes the market acceptance of new products in terms of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. The process of adoption over time is illustrated as a classic normal distribution or "bell curve."
The second version is an adaptation of the original that includes a gap in the bell curve, between early adopters and the early majority. This essentially splits the adoption process into three distinct phases, an early market and a mainstream market, separated by a period of time called the valley of death.


Both versions of the technology adoption lifecycle are useful tools for understanding the way markets unfold and mature. However the second (valley of death) version typically applies to discontinuous innovations, meaning the product forces the user to change behavior.
This is an area of great confusion because not all high-tech products are discontinuous, in which case the original technology adoption lifecycle applies more than its successor.
Another misinterpretation occurs when marketing folks refer to a market as characterized by "all late adopters." Because both technology adoption models are expressed in terms of a standard bell curve, it means statistically, a random sample of any given market or population must contain: 2.5% innovators, 13.5% early adopters, 33.4% early majority, 33.4% late majority, and 16.0% laggards. So even if an industry is conservative by nature, there will always be a sequence of adoption by different types of buyers.
In either case, the technology adoption model is like Chinese food--you'll be hungry for more guidance in a very short period of time.