I noted in my book that the destructive war for the next generation of DVD players, between HD and Blu-ray formats, would lead to nothing but trouble for the industry. Now a quick market analysis shows that Blu-ray, the putative winner in the war, has just 4% market share and formidable competition from other methods to deliver video. As the article puts it, "Who dreamed they could both lose?" Well, I did.
There's nothing quite like a standards war to slow down technology and kill sales. When the battle was between DVD "+" R and DVD "-" R, I saw consumers walk forgo purchase of a DVD drive rather than get risk getting stuck on the losing side. That war kept CDs alive for years. Now the HD/Blu-ray battles gave the regular video DVD players enough time to upgrade their players to emulate Blu-ray resolution.
Standards are a crucial example of disaggregation in action, and the failure to carry through on the standards effort has cost the participants dearly.
Topics: · business · standards
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