I think we're confusing "lifetime" in the reliability sense with "lifetime" meaning how long this particular LCD part will be available from the supplier. I've

I think we're confusing "lifetime" in the reliability sense with "lifetime" meaning how long this particular LCD part will be available from the supplier. I've been working with these types of LCDs for a long time, and when it comes to these WVGA/SVGA 7" units you can get a ton from Asia at great prices but the factory will literally disappear in a few months. The LCD fabs constantly get bought/sold/churned as the major players like Sharp and LG shed off their last-generation fabs and the other smaller fish scoop them up. Ideally a group like RPi will want to have the same part available for a long time so that they don't need to create new revisions of the interface cables, power supplies, or software drivers to handle the change. It's nearly impossible to autodetect one 7" LCD from another via software so you need to configure it entirely in a bootloader or kernel configuration line. And then that becomes a massive support issue.