[londons_explore]

Firmware updates often push new "business opportunities" for the manufacturer... Eg. HP printers that suddenly start forcing you to buy new cartridges after an automatic firmware update, since they realise that by forcing you to buy new cartridges before they're really empty, you'll buy more.

[alias_neo]

While this can be an issue, it's an obvious one and I'd say a good reason to avoid manufacturers and devices that enable such anti-user behaviour.

Generally speaking though, outside of printer ink, which I've always considered to be a racket, this sort of thing is perhaps less of an issue.

That's not to say people like Sonos and others haven't used firmware updates to brick otherwise perfectly functional devices in order to force consumers to "upgrade" before now.