"CM3+ will be available until at least January 2026" - That's an impressive commitment. I'm pleasantly surprised to see them stick their necks out that long into the tech future.
It's not horrible but it's not remarkable either. 8 years is a decent but it's nothing compared to other SoM (system on module) vendors like Toradex. Toradex generally offer 12+ year commitment on their SoMs.
Consider that if you start a design now using a SoM that you probably won't get to market for at least 1 year. Then in the industrial/commercial space it'll take at least another year for your sales to ramp up. If you started today designing with a CM3+ then you'd get 6 more years of sales out of the product after sales ramp, but since the above timeline is going to hold for your replacement of the current product, you're going to have to start engineering on the replacement 6 years from now. For some industries this will sound amazing, for others it'll sound like a deal breaker.
If you look at SoC (system on chip, the processor) vendors, generally they're offering 20+ years of sales from release for SoC which target the industrial/commercial embedded markets. Vendors like TI or NXP don't generally end of life their silicon for a very very long time.
If you need 15/20 years, you get a separate contract. 7 years as a baseline is not too bad, for that kind of device, but likely not sufficient on its own. Automotive test-beds etc. would require longer timeframes.
The other thing that impresses me is that the modules have remained electrically compatible, so (at least in theory) you could slot out a CM1 for a CM3+ and still expect it to work.
