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Strategies for Tomorrow's 'Winners- Take-Some' Digital Goods Markets.

The article examines how the digital goods market has moved away from a "winner-takes-all" market, in which a single product sets a standard over its competitors, towards a "winners-take-some" model that supports multiple different standards. According to the authors, this is possible due to the ine...

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Published in:Communications of the ACM Vol. 56; no. 5; pp. 76 - 83
Main Authors: KEMERER, CHRIS F., ZHECHAO LIU, CHARLES, SMITH, MICHAEL D.
Format: Article
Published: Association for Computing Machinery May2013
Subjects:
Digital technology
Software compatibility
Technology standards
Economic competition
Data compression standards
File conversion (Computer science)
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:The article examines how the digital goods market has moved away from a "winner-takes-all" market, in which a single product sets a standard over its competitors, towards a "winners-take-some" model that supports multiple different standards. According to the authors, this is possible due to the inexpensive and effective conversion from one format to another being more possible in digital standards. Noted examples include the use of multiple formats to display images, save audio file formats, and provide file compression.