Who's afraid of the big bad Microsoft?

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Not the BDA. If you look at very very simple numbers, you will notice the BDA (including its subsidiaries) is a larger entity.

Blu-ray support (only including 2 out of the many members in BDA)
Matsushita Electric (including Panasonic and all other subsidiaries)
Revenue: $74.5 billion USD
Employees: 334,752

Sony (including all subsidiaries)
Revenue: $70.303 billion USD
Employees: 163,000


HD DVD support
Microsoft
Revenue: $51.12 billion USD
Employees: 79,000

Toshiba
Revenue: $63.7 Billion USD
Employees: 190,708

A very rough approximation of a company's worth is based on revenue. With all this talk about Microsoft's omnipotent power in the tech industry, people forget how big of a powerhouse Sony is. Matsushita would probably eat Microsoft for breakfast. People think Microsoft always gets their way...but they are fighting the big boys this time and Microsoft pales in comparison.

Matsushita played an important role in the videotape format war since they were the parent company of JVC, developer of the VHS format. Matsushita (VHS) and Sony (Betamax) were against each other in the videotape format war. They are now together in this war. AND the first VHS recorder delivered in the US was $1060 USD....sound familiar?

I think that Matsushita probably plays a very important role in this current battle and they are probably providing invaluable information about format war semantics in this current battle.

Matsushita Reference (page contains link to actual data)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsushita

Sony Reference (page contains link to actual data)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony

Microsoft Reference (page contains link to actual data)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft

Toshiba Reference (page contains link to actual data)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba