ETC2 (Ericsson Texture Compression 2) is a lossy texture compression format standardized as part of the OpenGL ES 3.0 specification. It serves as an evolution of the original ETC1 format, providing significantly higher visual quality and support for alpha channels, which ETC1 lacked. ETC2 is widely used in mobile game development and real-time 3D graphics because it allows textures to remain compressed in GPU memory, drastically reducing the memory footprint and bandwidth requirements for mobile devices. By keeping textures compressed while they are being rendered, ETC2 helps prevent performance bottlenecks and reduces power consumption. It supports various modes, including RGB, RGBA, and sRGB, making it a versatile choice for modern mobile applications, including those built with engines like Unity, Unreal Engine, and Godot. Because it is a hardware-accelerated format, it is decoded directly by the GPU, ensuring efficient rendering performance across a wide range of Android and iOS devices.