NPD failure (?)

I've read this before, and now that I find a reference I thought I'd make a note:

"30,000 new products hitting the shelves each year but only 10-30% of them lasting into the second (Gavetti and Rivkin, 2005). The vast majority of new products, in other words, fail." -- Jonathan Hey.

Two things are interesting here: first, the vast number of products developed every year! The first question that comes to my mind is "really? do we need all that crap? And the second issue is: yes, one would imagine (intuitively) that a 90-70% rate of short-lived products is a failure... but is it? In view of the first point raised here, it would seem that perhaps the failure is not in having such a high rate of short-lived products, perhaps the actual failure is in wanting to design so much crap.

What I'm trying to say here is: why do we immediately jump to the conclusion that we need to design 'better products' that have a higher rate of commercial success (lifespan)? Isn't this rather telling us that we should design less?