An economic analysis of standards competition: The example of the ISO ODF and OOXML standards

The objective of this paper is to analyze economic efficiency considerations of standards competition, in order to thereby enrich the discussion about the transfer of the ECMA-376-1 (Office Open XML – OOXML) standard into the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 standard parallel to the already existing ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (Open Document Format for Office Applications – ODF) standard. Based on the available economic literature we identify parameters that need to be considered in the decision for or against a competition between competing standards. The characteristics in the specific case of competition between the ODF and the OOOXML standard clearly justify the decision for two documents standards.