During Productivity Wars, the company pushes to lower the costs of supporting the product. At the same time, revenues from training decline because users are less willing to pay for it. In this final stage, the products in the genre have become a commodity. The various vendors provide nearly identical products, and price increasingly becomes the key differentiator. Once a product has reached the Transparency stage, there's no advantage in further modifying it for that market.
Companies focus on lowering production costs as price wars chip away at their profit margins.
Or, they seek new markets for the product. Marketers hate stage 4. The office suite genre is in stage 3, but its spreadsheet and word processor components are simply part of the package. Most software products still have a way to go before reaching this stage. The transition from Checklist Battles to Productivity Wars is especially crucial.