It's still happening to LEDs as well. Big brands are over driving LED chips, degrading their lifespan significantly.

The story of the Dubai bulbs show that the industry could easily make bulbs that last (even) longer, but there's no money in selling products you'll never need to replace.

My understanding - which may be wrong - was that long-life bulbs used more electricity to operate and that the efficiency gains of a 1,000/hr bulb reduced the overall cost.

So, making up numbers, a 2,500 hour bulb may cost $5 to replace and would incur $20 of electricical charges for a total cost of $25 or 1 Cent/hr. Meanwhile, 1,000 hour bulbs would cost $10 ($4 * 2.5) while incurring $10 of electrical charges for a cost $20 or 0.8 Cent/hr... even factoring in the cost of having to replace the bulbs.