Difference between revisions of "Technology Standards: letting the consumer decide?"

From ScenarioThinking
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Line 25: Line 25:


==Timing==
==Timing==
Standards are not new for us, although it's also a phenomenon of the last couple of decades. Before that standards were developed and than mass produced by all the companies. Some of the standards that can be distinguished are the radio and television.<br>
The first real standard war started in the 1980s when the different video standards were introduced, of course everyone knows the VHS standard overcame all its competitors but still didn't really posses the superior quality over its competitors, like betamax did.<br>
After that most of the standards where set in the music industry, where as the DAT tape, minidisc and DCC are some examples of the products that didn't survive. The Compact Disc (CD) was widely accepted as the standard to exchange music.
In the digital era, the Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) was accepted as being the best medium to carry movies and other video content, whereas the Laserdisc standard was never widely accepted mainly because of it size comparable with a LP. Recordable DVD brought a new fight between major companies one group came with the DVD-RAM standard where other came with DVD+R and DVD-R, eventually the last two became interoperatible.<br>
Nowadays one of the biggest wars is between the use of the Blue-Ray standard or the HD-DVD where both standards have big companies supporting them.


==Web Resources==
==Web Resources==

Revision as of 21:29, 16 March 2005

Description

Enablers

  • Patents
  • Licensing
  • Competitive Advantage
  • Marketshare
  • Consumers

Inhibitors

  • Patents
  • Law Suits
  • Government regulations
  • Consumer acceptance
  • Competitors

Paradigms

On the one hand standards have there use, the make it easy for a lot of companies to produce the same products where the media can be interchanged by everyone. On the other hand companies rival each other till one standard becomes the winner or a combination is developed to incorporate in different devices.
In the game console industry standards are made with each new console. Interoperatibility is only possible with older models of one company's game console. Does the consumer really decide what standard a company should adopt? Not in a long shot, but standards are what make companies different from each other.

Experts

  • Stango, Victor (2004) The Economics of Standards Wars
  • Varian, Hal R. (1998) Standard wars

Timing

Standards are not new for us, although it's also a phenomenon of the last couple of decades. Before that standards were developed and than mass produced by all the companies. Some of the standards that can be distinguished are the radio and television.
The first real standard war started in the 1980s when the different video standards were introduced, of course everyone knows the VHS standard overcame all its competitors but still didn't really posses the superior quality over its competitors, like betamax did.
After that most of the standards where set in the music industry, where as the DAT tape, minidisc and DCC are some examples of the products that didn't survive. The Compact Disc (CD) was widely accepted as the standard to exchange music. In the digital era, the Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) was accepted as being the best medium to carry movies and other video content, whereas the Laserdisc standard was never widely accepted mainly because of it size comparable with a LP. Recordable DVD brought a new fight between major companies one group came with the DVD-RAM standard where other came with DVD+R and DVD-R, eventually the last two became interoperatible.
Nowadays one of the biggest wars is between the use of the Blue-Ray standard or the HD-DVD where both standards have big companies supporting them.

Web Resources

Retrieved from "https://www.scenariothinking.org/index.php?title=Technology_Standards:_letting_the_consumer_decide%3F&oldid=3303"