[Per_Bothner]

Not always, but in this case the superior product (i.e. VHS) won. At initial release, Beta could only record an hour of content, while VHS could record 2 hours. Huge difference in functionality. The quality difference was there, but pretty modest.

[jrochkind1]

I suppose one lesson could be that there are different dimensions of superiority, different products may be superior in different ways.

Of course, products also can win market dominance for reasons external to the product's quality itself (marketing, monopoly lock-in, other network effects, consumer preferences on something other than product quality itself, etc).