- To avoid loosing existing customers: Customer who are using your existing products want to be re-assured that you have something exciting right around the corner. In the age of global competition and unlimited choices keeping the customer engaged is more important now than ever before.
- To gauge the demand: This is primarily used by startups to gauge demand for a particular product idea to get an understanding of whether it’s worth building and developing a business model around it.
- To help define & tune the product: Announcing your product early helps business engage potential customers, gather feedback and help define & tune the current product or enable the business to create follow-on products derived from the one they just announced.
- To line up partners & enable the ecosystem: Certain products heavily rely on having partners (including developers) sign-up. E.g., Windows operating system needs developers to update their apps and make new one way ahead of the product is available. Announcing a product early will help gather the attention of partners & engage with them early on in the product cycle to be successful.
- Competition is making noise : News is a form of advertising. When competition announced something compelling and is making a lot of noise – often business respond with their own announcements to counteract.
- Financial returns : For public companies product announcements have a impact on the market value of the company and certain times companies do resort to using this to the advantage of the shareholders.