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What is the Product Life Cycle (PLC)?
The product life cycle is a sequence of stages of a new product that has just entered the market. These stages include: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. When a product is first launched, the sales start off slow as people are just being introduced to the product. After a while, there is an increasing growth of sales of the product as more and more people start to buy it. Once it hits "maturity," this means that the sales of the product is increasing at a decreasing rate where the sales maintain a somewhat steady rate (typically high: this is where companies earn most of their profit). Once the product starts to deteriorate or go out of trend, the product declines until it is no longer being bought/sold.