The thermal imaging devices, like the lepton series of sensors, are awesome little gadgets for the price. The key quality in this domain of products is cost effectiveness. It is a fledgling application, and obviously the industry leaders have saturated the market from above. Nearly all of the users who could justify buying a product for four figures have done so. Now, companies such as flir have set their sights on the entry-level market at the next level down.
There are half a dozen companies that have been manufacturing the high-dollar thermal cameras for decades. The sensor arrays and software engines have been through many generations of improvement. Up until now, their market focus has been on aerospace and military applications. To these companies, the entry-level market is below their quality (and profit margin) level. They just can't put a low-rez sensor on a missile or weather satellite.
The only exception so far has been flir. With virtually zero competition in this emerging market, they have a distinct advantage. I imagine the reason they improved the original flir one so soon is that customers were not overly impressed with them. Obviously, they sold all they initially released, and have been having trouble keeping them in stock. Why not improve the device? Like cell phones, if they market a new device every year or two, bleeding-edge buyers will gladly fork over 3 figures for the "new and improved" model. Repeat customers are a good thing.
Whether or not the new unit is four times better or not is in the eye of the beholder. With such a new product, it is easy for the OEM to make subtle or drastic improvements, depending mainly on the "bugginess" of the prior design. Remember that the bulk of flir's technology ten years or so ago was in ultra-high sensitivity and resolution devices. They are basically "dumbing down" the tech they already have to feed the masses.
Whether or not the tech is obsolete or not is for you to decide. They have many sensors in use today helping to predict the weather for the NWS and NOAA today that were put in service in the 90's. Not to mention what's in all the NRO spy satellites that still don't exist yet, but were made who knows how long ago. How much longer have our astronomical and planetary observatories and unmanned spacecraft lived past their expected life cycles? I myself became immune to the obsolescence factor before the days of high speed and wireless internet service. SWMBO, not so much (she has a galaxy in her purse, literally).
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