[projektfu]

There was a time when standards would be developed voluntarily by the major players for the parts that are tangential to their innovation. Apple's success with the iPhone isn't because they use a connector that is prone to shorting and susceptible to lint. Tesla's success in electric cars isn't because they didn't help develop a standard connector. However maybe they plan to pivot to overpriced electricity at their proprietary stations if they lose their competitive advantages, who knows?

When innovation was occurring in integrated circuits the companies standardized on the 0.1" DIP. Then as needs for smaller packages came they worked together on TSSOP and others. Obviously the innovation isn't a matter of packaging.

[imoverclocked]

The original iPhone/iPod 30-pin dock connector was just that: a dock connector. At the time, I recall a lot of different dock connectors and they were all proprietary and special built for the electronics they supported; That was the state of the art in the late 2000s. The next iteration was the lightning connector which is standardizing on USB. It was also better than any usb connector at the time because it could be inserted in either orientation that made physical sense. After a decade of use, we have a lot of expectations around connectors that we didn't in 2012... like pocket lint and well-worn/damaged ports.

If you look at the USB implementors forum, you'll notice many of the big players are there (including Apple.)

I would argue that the 0.1" DIP was a technology innovation of its own. It was adopted because it solved a problem with scalability of TO-5 and similar packaging which was somewhat round in nature, maybe borrowing from the design constraints of vacuum tubes? (complete guess on that part!) There are variants of DIP which have different dimensions than the 0.1" DIP we see almost everywhere today. While there may have been cooperation in choosing 0.1" DIP, I think it's more likely that available parts were largely made in this form factor and thus it was adopted.

[projektfu]

I'm just saying that RCA didn't produce 0.1" DIP while Fairchild produced 2mm DIP, and then make people decide which overall format they're going to work with before buying breadboards and the like.