Sunday, August 27, 2006

Business 101

I've talked about this before recently but the issue has come up again one of my regular reads so I've been thinking about it again. I have come to the conclusion that the history of Sony's Betamax, and Apple computers should be the first thing taught to Business School students as an example of what NOT to do. Both companies took clearly superior products, that should have dominated their markets, and completely mismanaged them.

There are currently two competing systems for the high definition DVD market, which will be taking off in the near future. (Analog TV will be departing soon, and people will start switching over to HD as their old systems wear out)

The first of these systems is called Blu-Ray. This is the system designed by Sony. By initial reports, this system seems to be the superior system. It has a larger capacity. But a drawback is that it seems to be more susceptible to damage.

The competing system is called HD DVD and was designed by Toshiba. This system seems to be more flexable. It has the support of Microsoft, which is a good leg up. It also hit the market 3 months earlier than Blu-Ray.


It will be interesting to see how this battle turns out.

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