Contextual and Tactical Changes in Standards Wars: What Consequences for "Winners"?

Abstract

Over the last decades, battles for technological dominance between competing technologies have had a significant impact on many industries. In this paper, we investigate how the fast-moving technology environment influences the tactical choices of companies trying to establish their products as de facto standards. We analyze contextual changes in the evolution of standards wars using a literature survey supported by three integrated case studies. We develop the portfolio of tactics that competing companies should apply in the management of emerging standards wars, composed both of traditional and new deployment tactics. We demonstrate that contextual and tactical changes heighten the pressures on timing and the competition exposure in today's standards competitions. As a consequence, it becomes more difficult for an alleged "winner" to "take all" in the marketplace. A = abandonment, C = conversion, D = de jure standardization, G = technologies are obsolete and replaced by a new product generation, W = clear winner. * * a.o. = among others. Int. J. Innovation Technol. Management 2008.05:447-474. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO on 02/03/15. For personal use only.

Third-party Provision of Conversion Technologies in Network Markets

“…Influence on consumer perception: As well as using tactics to influence consumer perception to adopt a base technology in de facto standardization processes (see a review of these tactics by Varé and Seifert, 2008), incumbents may influence consumer acceptance for third-party converters. By discrediting converters, incumbents can try to influence consumers' adoption willingness so that the perceived degrees of conversion are lower than the effective technical degrees of conversion.…”