Innovation Mobile Blog

In its Press Release of 19.02.2008 Toshiba Corporation announced that it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. “We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation.

News agencies report that this decision arrives as a result of losing the support of key studios and retailers to the Blu-ray technology backed by Sony Corporation.

This decision is likely to end a war between rival consortiums led by Toshiba and Sony vying to set the standard for high-definition movies on DVDs.

Some people call it the revenge of Sony for losing the Videotape format war (Betamax vs. VHS).

So, who sets standards for new technologies?

Certainly it is a very complex game of hardware manufacturers, content publishers and distributors, and end-users. What is the influence of end-users in this game? In my opinion very little. Consumers strive for the highest quality, ease of use, availability and the lowest price. The latter puts high pressure on hardware manufacturers to compensate quality with quantity. It also puts pressure on the authors and publishers of content to take sides with rivaling standards in order to reduce the cost of distribution. It does not necessarily leads into improving consumer experience with using the maximum in technology. This we could see with both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray not using interactive features that technology offered from the beginning as this would significantly increase cost of production.

I could write much longer story on wars of standards mentioning mobile telephony standards, computer networking standards, even electricity standards, etc. But my intention was only to trigger creative thinking whether you are consumer or innovator that sometimes the brightest ideas might not be immediately recognized and adopted. Luckily for consumers, the high-definition video format war has not taken very long and hopefully will be able to take full benefit of the new technology in years to come.

Luckily I bought PlayStation 3 last year…