January 7, 2008
Blu-Ray should be Sony’s last platform war
So Sony did it. And, if it has any sense, it will never try to do it again. The battle between Sony’s Blu-Ray high definition video disc standard and the rival HD-DVD backed by Toshiba and others appears to be ending in a victory for Sony.
Sony staked an enormous amount on winning. It incorporated Blu-Ray technology in its Playstation 3 games console, which made it both expensive and late, presenting a bigger opportunity to Nintendo’s Wii. Blu-Ray is the only big technology platform battle it has won since its defeat in the well-known contest between its Betamax video tape standard and JVC’s VHS.
Actually, the entire structure of the company is a product of that standards war. Sony’s weird strategy of combining a Japanese electronics company with a US film studio stems from a determination to have the muscle to impose standards. As I wrote in a column three years ago: “If Sony cannot win the Blu-Ray battle, then what is Sony for?"
So Howard Stringer, Sony’s boss, will presumably be dancing a victory jig at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas this week. After the travails of Playstation 3 and the struggle to turn the company around, the Blu-Ray victory, if that is how it turns out, is a fillip.
But he should never attempt it again (indeed, it was not a battle he picked in the first place and I cannot imagine he wants to repeat it).
For one thing, what is the point of establishing a technology standard? Presumably it is to make money from the patents associated with the standard – the inventor of a standard can license it out to others.
In this case, Sony has had to give away to attain Blu-Ray’s dominance. Other companies in the Blu-Ray Consortium share in the patent pool and have been given other financial incentives. I doubt whether Blu-Ray will be a huge money-spinner per se for Sony.
More broadly, Blu-Ray is the only standard I can think of that Sony has managed to promote successfully. Heaven knows, it is not for want of trying. Many others, from its Memory Stick flash drives to its Universal Media Disc storage device, struggle on without attracting much obvious backing (although I suppose that Sony would dispute that).
I cannot see that it is worth the effort or the cost. The whole Blu-Ray affair reeks of fighting the last war. If I were Sir Howard, I would be run a mile the next time a Sony boffin suggests setting and promoting a new standard.
