Arduino recently made a significant change to the Nano by switching to a different bootloader. This required a change to the hardware definition and the documentation. It's hard for me to believe they would go to that trouble just before discontinuing the board. On the other hand, I have always found the way Arduino runs its business to be completely mystifying so anything is possible.
I agree that it would be very nice if Arduino would be more transparent about the status of their boards. We see some products marked as retired, then suddenly they're available for purchase again, but permanently available or just a small run they're selling off before retiring again? They have some excellent communication channels in the Arduino Blog, Arduino Facebook page, Arduino Instagram account, Arduino Twitter account, Arduino forum, and Arduino developers mailing list but they rarely use these channels to get the word out about important changes.
None of this concerns me as long as I can buy the chips but I understand how it's a huge problem for others because I go through the same thing with my business where I will develop products that rely on a specific raw material only to learn through the grapevine that the manufacturer stopped making that essential item without any warning or formal announcement. One company has done that so often over the last couple of years that I have abandoned doing any further business with them.
falexandru:
I suspect this will affect the availability of the clones as well.
Why would it?