Standards wars: fighting to make your way the one everyone uses

The plug Tesla gave away

On November 11, 2022, Tesla published the design of its charging connector, the plug on every Tesla car and every Supercharger, and invited any carmaker or charging network to use it. It renamed the plug the North American Charging Standard.

Tesla said at the time that cars with its plug outnumbered those with the rival CCS plug two to one, and that its network had 60% more charging posts than all the CCS networks combined. It was also facing federal charging money that, at first, required stations to serve every brand, which pointed the funding at the rival plug.

So Tesla stopped treating the plug as its own and made it everyone's.

In May 2023 Ford became the first major carmaker to commit to it. Within weeks the standards body SAE announced it would standardize the plug, and by February 2024 most major carmakers had said they would adopt it. Tesla kept the thing the plug was attached to: by mid-2025 its network had 7,377 charging stations and over 70,000 connectors.

That is a standards war, and one way to win it: give away the format and keep what sits behind it. Not every company in this guide made that trade. Some won the standard and watched someone else collect the money. Some lost the standard and got paid anyway.

What standards war is

What makes a standard valuable is that others adopt it: carmakers, chipmakers, app developers. So the fight is less about having the best format and more about getting the rest of the industry to commit to yours, and about who collects the money once they have.

Why it is so hard

On paper the goal is to win. In practice, three things make it hard to know what winning means.

The ways companies did it

The decisions on record take five shapes. Each is a different bet on where the money will end up once a standard wins.

What 13 companies did

Here is every decision on record, placed by the year it was made and marked by how it turned out. Hover a mark, or open the table, for the company and the outcome.

Of the 13 decisions that can be judged, 12 were never undone and 1 held only in part, among them Epic's suit against Apple, which was settled in court rather than in the market.

"Never undone" is a weak word here. AMD's extension held and became the industry standard, and AMD did not gain share from it. Android held and won most of the world's phones, while more of the money from apps went to Apple. A company can hold its position in a standards war and still lose the part that pays.

One record is a looser fit for this decision. Microsoft's 2024 move to put Xbox games on rival consoles is about a subscription rather than a standard. That move has not been undone, though Game Pass has since stalled below PlayStation Plus.

How to run this decision

If you are weighing a version of this choice, here is what the record suggests doing, in order.

1. Decide which prize you are fighting for, and write it down

   The standard becoming universal, or the money you collect from it. The record has companies that got each and few that got both. Epic said up front it wanted a rule change rather than damages, and a rule change is what it won.

   Seen in: Epic Games, 2020
2. Secure how you get paid before you push the format

   Qualcomm's patent licensing did not depend on which 4G standard won, which is why losing its own cost it so little. If your revenue only works when your exact format wins, you are making a far larger bet than the engineering suggests.

   Seen in: Qualcomm, 2005
3. Ask who collects the surplus if you win

   Android won most of the world's phones and Apple took more of the app money. Before you give something away to win adoption, name the companies above and below you, and say which of them ends up with the margin your adoption creates.

   Seen in: Google, 2005
4. Turn the companies who would back a rival into partners

   ASML sold shares to Intel, TSMC and Samsung. A customer that co-owns the only supplier has little reason to fund a second one. It is cheaper than winning a format war, and it is available more often than it is used.

   Seen in: ASML, 2012
5. Prefer extending the old format to replacing it

   AMD extended x86 rather than starting over, and the company that owned the design adopted it. Keeping existing software working turns the incumbent's installed base from a defense into a way in.

   Seen in: AMD, 2003
6. When a rule is coming, move before the deadline

   Apple switched to USB-C a year before the EU required it, once it saw that keeping two plug designs cost more than one. Tesla opened its plug while federal funding rules were pointing money at its rival.

   Seen in: Apple, 2023 · Tesla, 2022
7. Treat a lawsuit as a purchase, and name what it buys

   Epic lost 9 of 10 counts against Apple and still won the one rule it sued for, because that rule was the only thing it asked for. A suit works when you can say in one sentence what it buys, and judge the result against that sentence rather than the scorecard.

   Seen in: Epic Games, 2020

Warning signs

What it has looked like when this decision was going wrong.

• You are giving the format away with no answer to who collects the profit it creates.Google, 2005
• Winning the standard is being counted as winning, with no payment attached.AMD, 2003
• A new store or format depends on one hit product to pay for itself.Epic Games, 2018

All 13 cases

Each case is one company at one decision: what was on the table, what it chose, why, and what followed, with every fact sourced.

Questions

What is a standards war?

A fight over which technical format an industry will use, such as a plug, a chip design or a phone operating system, when everyone gains from using the same one, so only one or two can win. Tesla's charging plug and the rival CCS plug in North America are a recent example.

How do you win a standards war?

By getting the rest of the industry to commit to your format, often by opening it up, keeping it compatible with what people already use, or giving would-be rivals a stake. But winning the standard is not the same as getting paid for it, so decide which you are after first.

What are examples of standards wars?

Tesla's NACS plug against CCS, AMD's 64-bit extension of x86 against Intel's plans, Android against iOS, Qualcomm's UMB against LTE in 4G, and Apple's Lightning plug against the USB-C rule in the EU.

Can you lose a standards war and still win?

Yes. Qualcomm's own 4G standard lost to LTE, but it had built up patents that LTE needed, and Apple later settled and signed a license. The format lost; the toll survived.