FACTBOX: Major standard battles in technology products
(Reuters) - Investors cheered the impending end of a format war for next-generation DVDs on Monday, pushing up shares of both Toshiba, on the verge of abandoning its HD DVD technology, and Sony, the leader of the rival Blu-ray camp.
A Toshiba source told Reuters on Saturday the company is planning to give up on its HD DVD format, conceding defeat to Blu-ray.
The battle has slowed the development of the high-definition DVD industry, which analysts estimate to be a multi-billion dollar market.
The following lists major battles for key technology products.
*Blu-ray VS HD DVD
Separate consortia led by Toshiba and Sony have battled for years to set the standard for optical discs and compatible video equipment for next-generation DVDs, a war often compared to the Betamax-VHS video cassette standoff of the 1970s and 1980s.
Sony-backed Blu-ray offers about three to six times more capacity than the current standard, with the potential to offer as much as 15 times. Rival HD DVD, developed by Toshiba, offers slightly less storage capacity than Blu-ray but claimed it had a cheaper technology. Blu-ray was launched in 2003, HD DVD in 2006.
Hollywood studios had initially split their allegiances between the two camps, meaning only certain films would play on any one DVD machine. The balance of power tipped decisively toward the Sony camp in January after Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros studio said it would only release high-definition DVDs in Blu-ray format.
U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc announced on Friday that it would abandon the HD DVD format and only stock its shelves with Blu-ray movies. Best Buy Co Inc and video rental company Netflix Inc also recently signed up to the Blu-ray camp.
*LCD VS PDP
Liquid crystal display (LCD) and plasma display panel (PDP) have fought for years for the title of the most popular flat display technology.
LCD, in which crystals are sandwiched between glasses and a backlight, offers vivid colors and can be used in bright light. PDP, which uses tiny pockets of gases, needs no backlight and provides faster images and natural color.
LCD has gradually gained ground as the technology expanded its market from small devices such as mobile phones to large TV panels. Very large TVs remain PDP's stronghold.
Big production lines and heavy investment by LCD makers, such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sharp Corp, enabled them to roll out larger screens at cheaper prices than plasma makers like Matsushita Electric Industrial Co and Samsung SDI.
Market research firm iSuppli forecast sales in the plasma panel market to rise from $7.6 billion in 2006 to $9 billion in 2008, then decline to $8.2 billion in 2010 and $7.6 billion in 2011.
It forecast the LCD TV panel market to grow from $22 billion in 2006 to $39.8 billion in 2008 and $53 billion in 2011.
*GSM VS CDMA
GSM (global system for mobile communications) is the most popular mobile standard used by more than 2 billion people. Competing with GSM is CDMA (code division multiple access), pioneered by Qualcomm Inc and mostly used in the Americas and parts of Asia.
The battle continues as operators, such as U.S. No.1 and 2 operators AT&T and Verizon Wireless, upgrade mobile networks to offer ever more advanced high-speed services.
GSM operators, such as Europe's Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom, chose the path leading to W-CDMA and its upgrades, while those in the CDMA camp are moving on to EV-DO, another high-speed standard. Britain's Vodafone owns Verizon Wireless together with Verizon Communications.
The battle is bound to get even more complicated as China is striving to establish a high-speed standard of its own.
(Reporting by Rhee So-eui; editing by Marie-France and Louise Heavens)
