Originally posted by The Architect
Sony and Toshiba are not known as big bad chip designers... not like Fujitsu! But anyways, IBM did much of the work. Yes, the other two helped, but it was mostly IBM.
Anyways, as for standards, most of them suck! They are only "standard" to make things cheap and miserable. Look at the hidiousness of x86 or them silly W3C HTML version "whatever they feel like now". They don't work well most of the time. Its just usually cobbled together so that it "just works". Hardly any elegance or anything...
But I'm ranting. Standards are good, but not when all the members in them committees are self serving... businesses! 
The thing is, good standards loose. Bad ones win. Who knows why? Maybe its a conspiracy!
I had to keep track of BS and IEC standards to ensure that products met them, if its commities then there out of date all the time hence W3C, too many people arguing over what to include, these generally get used as a basic set to build, if the defacto standards that constantly roll with developments then there not to bad, as there up to date, which happens all the time in software, interface etc.
Haha, good standards loosing and bad ones winning, it's just whatever gets picked up and used quicker.
"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle