Who will win the Standards Game?

For the foreseeable future, companies will continue to preach interoperability while pursuing proprietary hegemony. This could lead to several scenarios. One is that one company, or camp, wins. The digital home, unified by the winner's standards, might then become a reality in the mass market. For this to happen, however, several companies and industries would first have to make huge strategic mistakes, and consumers would have to accede, in effect, to a repeat of the “Wintel” (Windows and Intel) near monopoly in the PC industry today.

Another possibility is that the technology wars end with a truce, perhaps brokered by industry consortia that push open standards. This would be infinitely preferable for consumers and would probably make the digital home a reality much sooner, since it would mean that consumers could shop incrementally for new gadgets, all of which will fit with the others.[4]