Ch09. Collaborative Strategy(HD Yang)
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similar to SDO (Standard Development Organization) practices. - Most consortia were established by core groups of founder members and made up mostly of multinational ICT supply firms and/or large national public telecommunication network operators.
- Consortia are accountable only to their own members, not to the public. The forum/consortium standard is also called Forum Specification. De facto standard develops from either a single company’s market dominance or from an alliance to develop and promote a particular technology favored by a coalition of firms (Axelrod, Mitchell, Thomas, Bennett, and Bruderer, 1995). **De Facto Standard De facto standard pertains to both the forum/consortium standard supported by companies having the same interests by organizing a forum or a consortium and the market standard when a specific company secures market dominance without official endorsement or approval. MS Windows is considered the market standard. Forum specification is often used by late starters that usually organize an alliance to compete against the winner after they lost in the battle for the de facto or market standard (Kexin, 2007). It is also an effective strategy when there is no dominant standard in the market and if numerous forums compete against each other for market leadership (Kexin, 2007). Such forum specification evolves into the market standard after capturing the market share, or it becomes the de jure standard with a petition to the standard-setting organization. Any consortium standard that survives the market competition ultimately captures the position of de facto standard. Once a technology secures market domination, there is no incentive for de jure standardization because it would mean opening up the market for other players (Egyedi, 2001). Therefore, a consortium standard can also be called potential standard; its products are called specifications (TTA, 2008). For this reason, companies organize consortiums for the fast acquisition of status of standardization.
9.4.3.1 Background of Consortia Since the mid-1990s, industry-wide forum/consortium standardization pertaining to a particular technology has emerged as an important driver for a standard due to the divergence, convergence, and advancement of ICT. Companies of advanced economies had initiated the industry-wide consortium to acquire first-mover advantages in the core