Digital device convergence--with a twist
Consumer Electronic suppliers increasingly combine several seemingly unrelated functions into a single device. As the number of digital consumer devices grows, a market for combination devices is unfolding which will be driven by the needs, tastes and lifestyle elements of clearly defined market segments.
While specialized devices will continue to exist, consumers will increasingly expect that a device covers a variety of applications. This could lead to the mergence of a new breed of device driven computing platforms.
Just a few days ago, Sony announced a PC which can receive TV programs and record them to the hard drive. Other new device combinations are announced constantly: cell phones with built-in MP3 players, digital cameras which can shoot short movies, palm devices which double up as digital cameras--you name it. And while it is too early to see which mixture of features sells and which doesn't, there is a clear underlying trend here.
The idea of device convergence has been floating around the industry for quite some time--and it is going to take increasingly unexpected turns. There are several good reasons for this. The market for digital gadgets is increasingly crowded, and consumers are getting picky about what is worth their dollars. And this means that one-trick-ponies will have a increasingly hard time to find a market niche big enough to support them. The poor sales records of e-book devices for instance, show clearly that the public is not ready to embrace just any new gadget, even when pushed by considerable media hype.
Combining unrelated elements
So far, the notion of convergence is usually applied to the combination of
aspects which make sense together on a logical level: a cell-phone which
offers e-mail functionality caters for the same basic need to
communicate, for instance.
The trend which is likely to increasingly emerge is a different kind of convergence, one which is based not so much on technological needs, but on lifestyle elements and market segment specifics. This means that increasingly, we will have seemingly unrelated functions built into the same device: a cell phone with built-in MP3 player, for example, or a mobile device which lets you take a snapshot and e-mail it instantly to a friend.
In other words, we will increasingly see devices which combine seemingly incongruous elements of the much-touted "digital lifestyle." Right now, we are in the early stages of this. Most cell phones today have clunky video games built in, but as high-quality LCD screens come down in price, we could well see a cell phone doubling up a as a Gameboy. E-book readers didn't sell--but any handheld computer in the future will offer e-book functionality. Likewise, we can expect digital cameras to pop up in the must unusual places.
Towards new computing platforms
In the long term, this trend could actually lead to the emergence of new kinds of computing platforms. We have already seen how the Palm has become an operating system environment in its own right, and similar things are likely to happen with other kinds of devices.
In fact, we are likely to wind up with a computing landscape which is built around several centers of gravity: desktop and laptop PCs on the professional end, handheld devices (Palm et. al.), future generation cell-phones, as well as game consoles. There may also be the emergence of an intermediary type of device, the personal notepad which we discussed in our last trend report.
In any case, lifestyle of the target user group, as well as usage patterns, will become an increasingly important factor for the selection of individual functions which are going to be offered on these devices Of course it will take several generations of devices and gadgets before the market sorts out which combination makes sense and which doesn't--but the convergence will happen, and it will wind up producing appliances we can not even imagine yet.
Andreas Pfeiffer is an industry analyst and editor in chief of the Pfeiffer Report on Emerging Trends and Technologies.