I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…
"Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products since they're already invested in the existing system". We all need to put our support behind the most open of the open source lighting control/home automation options! Then the open options will be the most compatible options. If we do it right, then proprietary bulbs will just work with themselves, and the marketplace will punish them.
The most basic feature of a "General Lighting" product, besides providing light, is interoperability. They have an opportunity to push general lighting into the next generation and reap the benefits of the long-term experience they have with the early-adopter market.
Instead, they've decided to put their product into the category of "Novelty Lighting". Meanwhile, should a competitor come along offering an open solution (there's probably one already?) that gains traction, Philips will lose, and they'll probably dump the product line well before they've lost, fulfilling the only guarantee a lock-in can fulfill: obsolescence.
And even if they walk this back, the damage is done. They've shown they are willing to break customer's existing installations via a software update and will do so without more than an FAQ to explain it. They basically pushed a software update with the result of turning the lights off on their customers.
It's disappointing more than anything. Someone out there will do better.