Comment by hnlmorg

A little of both.

speakers used to be something that would last a lifetime. I still have the same active monitors that I bought quarter of a century ago when I was producing techno. And I still used those speakers daily for listening to the radio. I used them for a NYE house party. They’re used often and still perform as well today as they do when they were new.

smart speakers is just a way of introducing forced obsolescence into the market.

So these EOL guarantees are nice, but EOL for speaker used to mean 50+ years later or when someone idiot inflicted physical damage onto the hardware. And even then, it was often still repairable.