In developing these Betamax technologies, Sony was betting on markets that it could foresee notwithstanding their not yet existing. Most obviously, it was betting that people who owned 8 millimeter and ‘Super 8’ movie cameras might come to prefer camcorders in light of the ease of playing video cassettes back on Betamax-enabled televisions. In light of that fact, the bets that investors place upon Sony and Betamax were well prompted as well. But the fact that those markets did better than Sony and Betamax themselves highlights a prospect that some Sony and Betamax investors overlooked in the mid-1970s. I mean this: It made sense to invest in video technology in the later 1970s and early 1980s.

Source: Forbes December 17, 2017 22:52 UTC