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Field firmware updates for hardware are to greatly reduce the risk a product needs to be recalled -- this is a worst case scenario with great cost for the manufacturer. To some extent it also reduces the pre-ship software verification costs -- potential damage from a bug slipped is greatly reduced.

Security risks are harder to quantify for the bottom line.

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To some extent it also reduces the pre-ship software verification costs -- potential damage from a bug slipped is greatly reduced.

It also encourages reducing effort spent in fixing bugs before release, which is why I absolutely loathe this "update culture": the "we can always fix it sometime later" mentality is like procrastination, and leads to barely-working products being released.

It is true that before easy field-updateability, products did ship with unfixable bugs, but I feel like it has only gotten worse from there.

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