Mannerisms

Convergence is a lovely idea for the chip industry but a poor idea for consumers.

The two best-selling products of the last few years have been the Blackberry and the iPod, both, effectively, single-purpose devices. One a mobile email terminal; the other a mobile music player. Both flying in the face of the contemporary mantra of convergence.

For the chip industry, convergence is a lovely idea because it fits in so well with what the chip industry does best i.e. adding more functions to the same sized piece of silicon for the same cost under the Moore’s Law principle.

But one remembers Gordon Moore expressing his disappointment at the lack of appreciation of convergence by consumers when, some 30 years ago, Intel went into the digital watch business.

“We thought the digital watch would become part of an electronic system which would grow”, said Moore. It didn’t.

Two decades later, the mobile phone industry, despite many efforts to add functionality, has managed only to make camera functions ubiquitous on handsets.

People only wanted digital watches to tell the time. They only want mobile phones to make phone conversations. They want a Blackberry only to send and receive emails. And an iPod to store and play music.

As the October Update of the Future Horizons monthly report points out that:

"The market is favouring low-end phones and the supply chain vice versa."

The report goes on to complain:

"Today's high-end phones are simply too difficult to use and overly complex to operate. By our reckoning an awful lot of people who bought 3G handsets experienced a high degree of user frustration for very little (if any) benefit."

Convergence is a chip industry pipedream. Consumers want it simple.