Complementary products are items that can be made that use comparable technology. Sharp Electronics produces complementary products: In the Seventies, they produced eight–track tape decks and cassette decks; in the Eighties, they phased out eight–track tape decks as compact disc players became popular; in the Nineties they added laser disc players and digital video disc players to their audio component product line. These products have helped Sharp Electronics stay in business as consumer purchasing trends have made certain products outdated for newer types of audio component equipment.

The life cycle of a product will bring it into vogue, and after time, make it obsolete. By producing multiple complementary products, a company can progress with a new production line as older products fall out of favor with the consumer. Since the complementary products use similar technologies, development teams can leverage technology discovered in prior products and implement that knowledge for future products. The leap from producing CD players to producing DVD players is not that significant, in that much of the technology (e.g., optical reading lasers, multiple disc turntables, display panels, RCA connections, and remote control capabilities) can be interchanged from one device to the other with few or no modifications. Even the development teams may be interchanged for working with comparable components on complementary products.