MultiMedia Card
xD Picture
Smart Media
Memory Sticks
Secure Digital
Compact Flash
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Jan-03
Apr-03 Jul-03 Oct-03 Jan-04 Apr-04 Jul-04 Oct-04 Jan-05 Apr-05 Jul-05 Oct-05 Jan-06 Apr-06 Jul-06
figure 2. adoption of digital image formats by market position and Web traffic; data source:
http://w3techs.com/technologies/market/image_format
Image File Formats, Market Positions, W3Techs.com, 5 Mar 2012
used by high traffic sites
ICO
PNG GIF JPG
used by low traffic sites
used by fewer sites
BMP
used by many sites
Digital-image formats use, November 2011–april 2012, top one million websites;
data source: http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/image_format/all
Digital image format used
JPg
giF
Png
BMP
iCO
none
November 2011
71.8%
69.9%
50.9%
0.8%
0.2%
9.9%
april 2012
72.4%
67.3%
55.6%
0.7%
0.2%
9.4%
In the case of digital image formats
several competing standards, including .jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp, and .tiff, have
coexisted for years. Although some
formats tend to be more popular than
others, there is little tendency toward
a winner-takes-all outcome, perhaps
best illustrated in the adoption of various digital image formats by websites
worldwide (see the table here).
It is clear that the majority of these
websites adopt multiple formats to
display images, but a dominant position has not led to a self-reinforcing
growth path. The market shares of the
three leading formats have been relatively stable over time, and, in fact, the
market share of the third leading image format—.png—has shown some
growth, a phenomenon that does not
support what might be predicted by
the classic theory of network effects.
Moreover, the popularity of the leading formats is not driven by Web traffic, hence not by visitors’ preference,
suggesting compatibility among these
formats is not a major factor in adopting a particular digital image format
(see Figure 2).
Similar situations are seen in other digital media formats, as in audio
(such as .wav, .aac, .mp3, .wav, .aac,
.mp3, .wma, .flac, and Apple Lossless), video (such as .wmv, .mpg, .avi,
.flv, and .mov), and file compression
