Even if it could only encode JPG into a smaller format losslessly it would still be a major selling point that basically everyone in at least the e-commerce world would want. Think about how many hundreds of terabytes of JPG files eBay and Alibaba send per day, and cut that size in half for no quality loss.
Amazon alone sold over 375 million items this last Prime Day. Let’s say that was 200 million items loaded/day (ignoring the unpublished number of failed sales), with 9 images (the maximum from a cursory glance) at 2000x2000 for a 1:1 ratio and zoomability. For a 90% quality JPG at 24-bit color that’s 410KB. ((410KBx9)200,000,000) = 738TB. Now imagine cutting that in half with no perceptive difference except faster loading to the end-user.
For end users the other options may be more desirable, but I would argue the importance is in the compression itself.
Amazon alone sold over 375 million items this last Prime Day. Let’s say that was 200 million items loaded/day (ignoring the unpublished number of failed sales), with 9 images (the maximum from a cursory glance) at 2000x2000 for a 1:1 ratio and zoomability. For a 90% quality JPG at 24-bit color that’s 410KB. ((410KBx9)200,000,000) = 738TB. Now imagine cutting that in half with no perceptive difference except faster loading to the end-user.
For end users the other options may be more desirable, but I would argue the importance is in the compression itself.