Things (I) learned from the war

Shane Greenstein, professor of management and strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University:
The lesson for vendors: a format victory does not guarantee profitability.
The lesson for an impatient buyer: a format war does not benefit every impatient buyer.
The lesson for a patient buyer: patient buyers gain certainty by ceding control.

Pai-Ling Yin, assistant professor of strategy at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management:
There is but a limited amount of time (until the appearance of the next generation technology) for the firms and the technology of this generation to reap the rewards of being the shiny new item on the block. That window of opportunity can be eaten away in a standards battle between two incompatible technologies.
The next-generation DVD player is only one battle in the larger war over the living room. Who will control the home entertainment center?

Andrei Hagiu, assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School:
The more interesting question is, “Has Blu-ray has really won?” This epic standards duel has lasted about two years and, as a result, both camps have sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into trying to gain the upper hand — not necessarily by improving their respective standards technologically, but, say, by paying bribes to large content providers in order to win their support.
It is not clear that the current size of the “pie,” which is now available for sharing between Sony and its allies, is big enough to offset these losses.
In fact, the greatest irony of all is that Toshiba’s price went up 5 percent after the announcement last week. That’s not so surprising, in light of the above: investors must be relieved that Toshiba will finally stop throwing money away in order to get people on its standard.
Perhaps one lesson that this particular war drives home particularly well is this: not fighting in the first place might be a very good strategy to win, if only the contestants could be smart enough at the beginning.
Bystander players in standards wars (in this case, content providers such as Hollywood studios) also have a lesson to learn: indecisiveness can be very wasteful for them, too.

Michael Santo, executive editor of RealTechNews and technology blogger:
The lesson learned is an expensive one, for the companies involved as well as for consumers. For the former, the lack of a unified standard will end up costing the “losers” millions.
For consumers, the lesson is: don’t rush in immediately when something new comes out.

WSJ: Aren't you at a disadvantage with just standard DVD players?

Mr. Nishida: What people don't realize is that Hollywood studios are going to release new titles not just for Blu-ray but for standard DVDs as well, and there are a far greater number of current-generation DVD players out there. If you watch standard DVDs on our players, the images are of very high quality because they include an "upconverting" feature. And we're going to improve this even more, so that consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images. The players would be much cheaper than Blu-ray players too. Next-generation DVD players are in a much weaker position than when standard DVD players were first introduced.

WSJ: How do spend your free time?

Mr. Nishida: My hobby is reading. I usually read six to seven books simultaneously on subjects like politics, economy, management, history and science in addition to novels. Two or three of them are usually in English. I just finished reading "The Future of Management." Right now, I'm reading Lawrence Lindsey's "What a President Should Know" and "Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls."