Who Favors Compatibility in a Format War?

規格戰爭中誰喜歡相容？

周崇輝(Chung-Hui Chou)

規格戰爭 ； 相容決策 ； 單向相容 ； 垂直差異 ； Format War ； Compatibility Choice ； One-way Compatibility ； Vertical Differentiation

商略學報

5卷4期（2013 / 12 / 01）

283 - 298

英文

當市場存在兩家不同的硬體技術時，規格戰爭便會發生。本文建立一垂直差異化模型分析硬體技術廠商在規格戰爭中的相容決策。由於單向相容為現實生活中常見的現象，考量單向相容之可能性為本文探討重點。我們發現硬體技術的相容乃是面對增進其市場競爭力與緩和價格競爭兩者間之取捨。高品質硬體技術較關心網絡規模優勢甚於價格競爭。低品質硬體技術廠商關心的重點則是相反。結果指出高品質硬體技術採取不相容為一優勢策略。在另一方面，儘管低品質硬體技術，承受著競爭劣勢，但允許高品質硬體技術免費利用其網絡，卻可因而獲利。換言之，採取相容是低品質硬體技術的優勢策略。由是觀之，市場均衡結果為單向相容。本研究也發現，上述市場均衡結果不利於社會福利，藉由硬體技術標準化政策將有助於社會福利之提昇。

A format war occurs when more than one firm innovate similar hardware technologies successfully. This paper proposes a vertical differentiation model to analyze hardware technologies' compatibility choices in a format war. Since one-way compatibility can be easily observed in real life, compatibility is a unilateral decision and the possibility of one-way compatibility is considered in this paper. We find that a hardware technology's compatibility decision faces a trade-off between improving its competitiveness and relaxing a price competition. A superior hardware technology cares more about network size advantage than the extent of a price competition, while the inferior one is the converse. No matter the inherent quality of hardware technologies, the superior hardware technology always favors incompatibility. On the other hand, despite the inferior hardware technology suffers a competitive disadvantage due to a lower inherent quality, allowing the superior one to free-ride its network is profitable. The above results lead one-way compatibility as the equilibrium outcome, in which the superior hardware technology adopting incompatibility, while the inferior one adopting compatibility. We also show that the market equilibrium is socially inefficient and a hardware technology standardization policy is social welfare enhancing.

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