Convergence… convergence… convergence… what is convergence? There are a lot of definitions of convergence as defined by each person I ask. But what is really convergence? Why discuss convergence? I saw in the internet is that convergence specifically technological convergence is “the trend of technologies to merge into new technologies that bring together a myriad of media. While historically, technology handled one medium or accomplished one or two tasks, through technological convergence, devices are now able to present and interact with a wide array of media.”
Like most areas of marketing, advertising is changing rapidly. Some argue that change has affected advertising more than any other marketing function. For instance, while many different media outlets are available for communicating with customers, the ability to distinguish between outlets is becoming more difficult due to the convergence of different media types. In advertising convergence, and more appropriately digital convergence, refers to a growing trend for using computer technology to deliver media programming and information. Convergence allows one media outlet to take advantage of features and benefits offered through other media outlets. For instance, in many areas around the world television programming is now delivered digitally via cable, telephone or satellite hookup. This delivery method uses the same principles of information delivery that is used to allow someone to connect the Internet.
The convergence of television and Internet opens many potential opportunities for marketers to target customers in ways not available with traditional television advertising. For example, technology may allow ads delivered to one household to be different than ads delivered to a neighbor’s television even though both households are watching the same program. But convergence is not limited to just television. Many media outlets are experiencing convergence as can be seen with print publications that now have a strong web presence. The future holds even more convergence opportunities. These include outdoor billboards that alter displays as cars containing geographic positioning systems (GPS) and other recognizable factors (e.g., GPS tied to satellite radio) pass by or direct mail postcards that carry a different message based on data that matches a household’s address with television viewing habits.
The movement to digital convergence provides marketers with the basic resources needed to monitor users’ activity, namely, digital data. Any media outlet that relies on computer technology to manage the flow of information does so using electronic signals that eventually form computer data. In simple form, electronic data is represented by either an "on" or "off" electronic signal. In computer language this is further represented by two numbers "0" and "1" and, consequently, is known as digital information. All digital information can be stored and later evaluated. For media outlets delivering information in digital form, the potential exists for greater tracking and matching this with information about the person receiving the digital data. And tracking does not stop with what is delivered; it also works with information being sent from the customer. For instance, as we noted earlier, by clicking on their television screen viewers will soon be able to instantly receive information about products they saw while watching a television show. This activity can be tracked then used in future marketing efforts.
For a long time, media convergence was a case of traditional media adapting to the online world. But increasingly, the chosen platform for convergence is mobile devices.
Convergence can take many forms and since it is a buzzword for managers – along with words such as “viral”, “word-of-mouth”, “social media”, “sustainability” or “economic crisis” – there are still many individuals that have difficulties to define what convergence really is. According to the Merriam Webster online Dictionary, the word “convergence” refers as: “the merging of distinct technologies, industries, or devices into a unified whole”. Thus, in relation to this definition, the problem with the word “convergence” is that it can take many forms. To be more concise, it can take at least three forms that are useful to know for e-marketers.
The first form of convergence is used in terms of technological tools. In this way, most of useful (and even useless) electronic devices are now integrated in smart phones. In fact, most smart phones include (or will include) features of “traditional” cell phones, but also, devices like cameras, computers (desktop or laptop), electronic agendas, GPS, MP3 players and video game consoles. Moreover, it seems like a matter of time (but perhaps lots of time) before everyone has its own smart phone.
The second form of convergence is translated by the increase in the number of technological tools and transportation that converges to the Internet. Nowadays, it is possible to have access to the Internet in any transportation vehicle (airplanes, cars, boats and trains), as well as via many technological tools (cell phones, computers, interactive digital televisions, interactive kiosks and smart phones). Linking this second form of convergence with the first form leads me to predict that the convergence in terms of technological tools in smart phones will also result in an explosion in the number of smart phones kit available for any type of other technological tool, similar to the iPod car kit.
Finally, the third form is the convergence of the content of media to the Internet. Thus, more and more media such as advertising billboards, magazines, newspapers, radio stations, SMS, and television networks, produce content that includes an expression such as “visit our website at …”, that refers to a specific Internet website. By linking this form of convergence with the other two, media such as advertising billboards, radio stations, SMS, and television networks, will be able (in a near future) to instantaneously converge to the Internet by using smartphones. In the case of magazines and newspapers, it is still hard to predict what will happen, but the decreasing number of subscribers who actually read them will tend to convey those two media to concentrate their effort towards niche markets.
To think now a day, mobile phones are used in any tasks. Like it serves as your personal hand held computer, you can track down your schedule with this and it can also browse the internet anytime, anywhere (might depend on the mobile phone or the location). You can do anything with your mobile phone; some phones can even read PDF files for you to review your files. If we can remember, we communicate with other people that are far through snail mail, but with the help of the technology it improved into telephones or so called as a landline phones and so internet came so we cans end emails rather than snail mails, sooner beepers came into the market. Send messages to beepers by calling the operator to send that certain message, after few years the convergence of the beepers and the landlines phones and so there is the mobile phones. In your mobile you can take pictures, do you work, keep track of time, see you schedule without much hustle. To think of it, the mobile phones are a convergence of almost everything.
While the convergence of the IT and building controls will certainly result in many challenges for our industry, these are small when compared with the enormous new opportunities that convergence is creating for us.
Convergence offers the opportunity to simplify and reduce the cost of such instrumentation and improved zone control by offering simple and inexpensive methods of connectivity and processing capacity needed to operate building comfort systems more effectively. But more than this, convergence is beginning to allow building occupants to have a direct dialog with their comfort system using their PCs to ask for warmer, cooler, brighter, or darker spaces.
And convergence offers an improved path for automatically acting on those occupant requests to be certain each building occupant is served more effectively and efficiently. These are enormous opportunities because the need has gone unsatisfied for many years. It is a market that is continually growing while it waits to be served.
Over the past few decades these dramatic technological advances have coincided with a first wave of reform in developing countries, which has had a positive impact. However, this positive impact was largely accidental,resulting from a combination of internal and external pressures to open telecom markets and the transfer of GSM technology, which had achieved economies of scale from deployments in more mature markets. With digitization, all media become translatable into each other and escape from their traditional means of transmission: convergence relates to the merging of separate fields. What is primarily conceived of as merged relates to technology, but in a secondary sense, a number of other fields come into play including services, markets, related player configurations (industry alliances and mergers) and regulation.
"Convergence" is the "paradigm shift" of the last few years. The word gets bandied about a lot in the media world, but seems to have no set definition. I first heard it applied to the idea that someday soon all home media consumption -- Internet, television, music, gaming, and movies -- would take place on a single black box in the living room that would take the place of the home PC, television, stereo, gaming console and DVD player. Microsoft created its X-Box console with just this type of convergence in mind. It wouldn't be just a device to play games on, but the centerpiece of all home entertainment. Technologically, this wasn't such a stretch. Sociologically, though, it was, and it never happened. If anything, the marketplace is filled with an even more bewildering array of electronic gadgets today. With this style of convergence effectively dead, the word has gone on to take on a host of possible definitions. I sometimes get the disconcerting feeling that even many of those who use the word are doing so mainly because it is expected and somehow makes them feel good about whatever agenda they happen to be promoting.
This brings us to MIT Media Studies Professor Henry Jenkins and his 2006 book Convergence Culture. Jenkins knows exactly what he means by the term convergence, and his definition is much more complex, subtle, and interesting than the old one. Jenkins is not interested in the hardware level at all, but rather looks at looks at trends in media over the past decade on the macro level. He uses the term to refer to two principal trends: the tendency of modern media creations to attract a much greater degree of audience participation than ever before, to the point that some are actually influenced profoundly by their fanbase, becoming almost a form of interactive storytelling; and the phenomenon of a single franchise being distributed through and impacting a range of media delivery methods. These two trends go together, making it very hard to pull them apart and examine them separately.
“Technological convergence” is a fancy name for a simple idea: that over time, different technology systems will evolve to let you do similar tasks. Looking at mobile, device convergence means that if you can do something with a particular phone right now, you would expect to be able to do it on ANY phone before too long.
For years, mobile device convergence faced tremendous obstacles. But finally a real solution is emerging: an important technology called HTML5. Let me explain.
An app made for the iPhone cannot run on a Blackberry, and vice versa. In general, native mobile apps have to be remade for each platform, more or less from scratch. This gets tremendously costly very fast. It has proven a giant obstacle to mobile device convergence to date.
In other words: Making just an iPhone app is straightforward and affordable enough. But to remake it for Blackberry, then again for Android, then again for Windows Mobile, etc., adds up fast. The cost can total many tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
For organizations with very large IT budgets (think Fortune 500), that's fine. For the vast majority of companies, though, developing an app for every platform is not realistic. So in practice, only one or two platforms will end up being supported. Only those device types will be part of the full corporate IT stack.
Enter the solution: HTML5. HTML5 allows IT to create rich, high quality web applications that behave much like native "apps", doing most of the things a regular app can do. The difference is that an HTML 5 app only has to be created once. If engineered well, the app will run on any modern smartphone, and is likely to automatically work on most new phones over the coming years.
iPhone one and Android support much of HTML5 now. The next generation of devices from Blackberry and Nokia will also, and makers of other mobile device platforms (including Microsoft) are working hard to catch up. By the end of 2011, expect the vast majority of new devices to ship with strong support for this technology.
Bear that history in mind as you consider the creed of the singularitarians. Many of them fervently believe that in the next several decades we’ll have computers into which you’ll be able to upload your consciousness—the mysterious thing that makes you you. Then, with your consciousness able to go from mechanical body to mechanical body, or virtual paradise to virtual paradise, you’ll never need to face death, illness, bad food, or poor cellphone reception. If the “future is friendly” as the Telus catchphrase proposes, then everyone will end up in the next few years with a smartphone that they will be able to plug everywhere using some sort of kit. So, do you think the future is that friendly?
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