The consequences of meeting or not meeting performance expectations can have a large impact on share values. This puts pressure on firms to deliver high profit margins. Poor fiscal performance can lead to rumors of takeovers and uncertainty, resulting in erosion of confidence in the market, the marketplace, and sometimes the loss of valuable human resources within the organization. Pressures of the financial market can make firms attractive takeover targets, with the inevitable result that competing product lines are rationalized. Dramatic response to poor financial performance through restructuring can lead to the loss of key personnel and morale, short-term market share attrition, which is balanced against the benefit of longer term stability.
Technological obsolescence can happen quickly as new storage requirements surpass capacities.
This is most true with nonstandard technology. Without aggressive marketing and production to gain marketshare and create an installed base early, nonstandard technology often remains a niche market until superseded by capacity demands. This in itself is not as much of a short term risk because the newer products are usually backwards compatible. In the long term, however, this leads to shorter product cycles and the proliferation of legacy equipment for the consumers. Low inventory production methods and shortages of key components from time to time cause some products to be unavailable in mid production cycle.