This is path dependence, and it happens frequently whenever there are combinations of products and results.
Let's say there are five camera manufacturers. Each one makes a completely different size camera sensor. (Let's simplify and assume each camera manufacturer is fully vertically integrated, ie, they make the lenses and the electronics).
- Apple Camera makes 3:2 rectangle sensors in full color
- Blueberry Optical Co. makes 3:2 rectangle sensors in monochrome
- Cranberry Foto GmbH makes 1:1 sensors in full color
- Durian Digicam makes cameras with a circular sensor so no part of the lens image goes to waste
- Elderberry Cinema makes 16:9 cameras with anamorphic lenses for that w i d e s c r e e n movie look
All cameras cost $999 for a ~16 megapixel CMOS, kit zoom lens included. All five companies are competent: solid hardware, solid software, responsive marketing, leadership considers photography a core part of the company business. Consumers are pretty evenly split among the five brands; no one brand is dominating the market after one year of this exciting new age of "digital photography." With me so far? Cool. We've got the variety and innovation you dream of in your original post. Lovely stuff.
Inside ten years, I'll bet they'll all be doing what Apple Camera is doing: 3:2 rectangle sensors in full color. Below is an explanation of why, but you can saver yourself some time with the Cliff's Notes version:
People are dumb, and Capitalism is made of people.
Still want to know why? Because 3:2 is the choice of both Apple and Blueberry, and color is the choice of Apple, Cranberry, Durian, and Elderberry. Those overlaps are going to set Path Dependence in motion.
Fig Paper Inc. is trying to make photo paper for lab prints and for home printing. They are a new company, and they want to target the biggest market with the fewest products. So they start making 4x6" photo paper, allowing them to serve Apple customers and Blueberry customers. They tell users of Cranberry, Durian, and Elderberry camera systems to print their images on 4x6 paper and just trim away the white space. Nobody thinks that is optimal. Fig assures everyone that circular and square papers are coming…Soon™.
Grapfrut.com offers cool picture frames. They make the same calculation that Fig Paper made: target the 3:2 sensor crowd. (Especially because, let's be honest, it's very hard to get circular picture frames to balance correctly on a table or hang correctly on a wall.)
Meanwhile, in this first, exciting year of Digital Photography, all five camps of photographers are posting pictures to the Web and entering monthly photo contests run by
Popular Digital magazine. 80% of these photographs are color. 20% are in black and white. A few people who use color cameras downsample their color photos to B&W. No people who use black and white cameras upsample their photographs to pleasing color photographs.
After a year or two, the general public has grown accustomed to the idea that "normal" photographs are in color. And the general public has seen more framed/printed pictures of 3:2 photographs.
Website templates spring up with layouts and subconscious design choices that favor 3:2 photographs. Circular photographs don't display at all in some websites, and 16:9 photographs appear "squished". The web designers and software people assure everyone that expanded options compatible with 1:1 and 16:9 sensors are coming…Soon™.
Two years into the Digital Photography revolution, everyone wants to upgrade to 24 megapixel cameras. Some photographers are wondering if they want to stay with their current systems. After all:
- If you have a 3:2 sensor, all the websites work for you. All the picture frames work for you.
- If you shoot in color, you never have to explain your aesthetic to your coworkers.
- If you shoot in 16:9, you can't win Popular Digital's monthly contest because your images appear distorted.
- If you shoot in 1:1, you have to do weird things with matting or spend time and money on custom picture frames rather than the cheap next-day frames from grapfrut.com.
So what happens? A few percent of Blueberry customers switch to Apple. A few percent of Durian customers switch to Apple. Almost no Apple customers switch to another brand.
Two years after that, to the surprise of utterly no one,
Popular Digital still has not updated its website CSS to fully support circular pictures. They promise to do so…Soon™. Fig Paper has come out with 1:1 print-at-home paper, but it costs more than the 3:2 paper.
One year after
that (so year five of the Digital Photography revolution), Durian announces that they will be offering a line of cameras and lenses that support 3:2 sensor ratios. The Durian camp splits into Team Circular Purists and Team Rectangular Heretics (this schism mirrors a similar split in Durian's manufacturing and engineering teams, too). Some Durian veterans, unimpressed by the lens adapters offered by Durian, switch to Apple cameras.
Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Inside ten years, everyone is shooting 3:2 in color. Brands that haven't moved toward this standard don't have to go out of business; but they must find ways to stay profitable while serving a smaller group of customers. Ahem. Ahem.
That's Path Dependence. Don't tell me markets are rational. Markets are efficient, at best. The Invisible Hand is the best we've managed; the Invisible Brain rarely gets involved.
Path Dependence is why 90% of the cars on the road run on gasoline, even though steam powered cars from 1925 were very efficient over long distances. Path Dependence is why you must use crummy #2 pencils to take standardized tests and you can only buy (far superior) #2.5 pencils online. Path Dependence is why I'm typing all this stuff on a QWERTY keyboard that gives the keys "J," "K," "L," and "
SEMICOLON are you KIDDING me?" primo beachfront real estate under the fingers of my dominant right hand.