I’m on a panel tomorrow to debunk convergence. But here’s an example from this morning.
My great-great grandfather (up the male side) was Scottish. I live in Scotland. I have a Scottish surname. It’s not my job to reinforce national stereotypes, but Scots are known to be careful with their money. Despite being less than a 100% kosher Scotsman, something in my genes must have overwhelmed sense when I saved about $10 a day by choosing a hotel room without a window. But here I am in my den. In a land with approaching perpetual daylight, a room with perpetual darkness.
Last night I went to bed late, and went to sleep even later. Somehow, just one glass of wine is enough to disturb my body clock. (If we put any other industrial solvent in grape juice to get intoxicated, it’d be outlawed in a flash.) I set up my, um, smart phone to give me a morning alarm.
What I’d forgotten what that it was still on “silent” mode. Silent wake-up alarms don’t work for me. In fact, even noisy ones have only incomplete success. I think it’s the two kids that taught me to sleep through all possible forms of interruption until the full 8 hours of rest was done.
I woke up excruciatingly, shockingly late, with there being no external cues that morning had come. And gone.
So the “converged” device failed because of incompatible, overlapping use cases. And we’re just talking about an alarm clock and a phone here, not something really complex.
I wonder how many people in the audience are there to sell “converged services”, yet have both a watch and phone on their person?
PS - IPTV sounds much better in Swedish “eee-pee-tee-vee”. Still doesn’t make any money, though.
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What is Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) from IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings
As the first of what I hope will be a series of posts, I am going to talk about what Fixed Mobile Convergence is, or at least what it means from my perspective.
There are three different areas of FMC: Marketing Convergence, Device Convergence, a
[Read more] Tracked on May 18, 2006 03:08 AMCheck the statistic on under 25's wearing watches
http://chartreuse.wordpress.com/2006/04/22/rule-1-you-cant-kill-michael-douglas-wife-a-weekend-project/
I'm over that but haven't worn a watch in years. I have the time on my mobile phone.
Posted by: at May 18, 2006 10:12 AMTruth be told, consumers usually reject converged devices for the reasons you mention; the converged cell phone/PDA/hair trimmer/floor waxing device is something the technology industry is foisting on consumers, not something that satisfies actual consumer demand. We shouldn't be surprised that most of them fail miserably at functions specialized devices do very well.
A great example of consumers rejecting convergence is the kitchen. Food processor devices are quite capable of performing most kitchen functions with appropriate attachments. But if you look inside modern kitchen cabinets, you'll usually find somewhere between one and ten different choppers, blenders, and mixers for specialized needs. Optimizing around a single device is exactly the opposite of what consumers actually purchase and use.
Great article; keep up the good work.
Carl
mmm. I was a teacher of marketing strategy in a previous lifetime, (1998) and one of the examples I always used for convergence was the 'ole TV, Video, Sterio system example. People just did not trust that if their TV broke down, that they would have any entertainment left at all! And experience has taught them that things break down.
Posted by: at May 18, 2006 04:02 PMI did the silent alarm oversleep thing in Sweden before, and missed my flight home. The extra 3 hours sleep cost me about 50 quid an hour (but thank god for Easyjet)!
By the way, isn't it "eee-pee-tay-vay"?
Oh, and beware pointy-haired Swedes with NHS specs selling online clothing store concepts!