In all other cases, market leadership is the result of this week’s promo spend.

A market-based standard is a paradigm, so any technological change that supplants it will itself be a paradigm change, as in cultural change. The customers/users would have to change their practices. That is hard to do. Most technological change is black boxable and is transparent to users/customers.

A standard generated by a standards body is a non-competive standard. Vendors race to meet or bend the standard. A market-based standard my result from meeting the standard, but standards emerge from practice, so the market leads the standard, rather than follows the standard. So a standards body standard will not provide strategic advantage.

The real threat to a market-based standard’s market leadership is open source software.