Digital Convergence & Experience

8/8/2019 Digital Convergence & Experience

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/digital-convergence-experience 1/4

Digital Convergence & Experience

We have seen or rather used many examples of product convergence wherein a

couple of existing products/services come together and become available to us as

one product.

In this instance, convergence can be defined as interlinking of computing and other

information technologies; media content; communication networks (developed as a

result of the evolution and popularization of the Internet); and activities, products,

and services that have emerged in the digital media space.

It has all happened quickly: cellular phones, personal data assistants, cameras, and

the Internet are now present in a single product that is readily available and

affordable. Moreover, personal computers, televisions, DVD players, digital

recording technology, and the Internet are also fully accessible from a single

product that is also readily available and affordable.

At the same time, radios, telephones, blue tooth, and digital positioning systems are

now available in a single component as a standard device from major automobile

manufacturers. And such convergence is set to accelerate in the coming years.

NEED FOR CONVERGENCE

According to W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, authors of Blue Oceans Strategy,

companies follow Red and Blue Ocean strategy to fight their rivals in the market

and to grab a greater share of product or service demand.

In the Red Ocean industry boundaries are defined and accepted. As the marketspace gets crowded with more number of players to fulfill demand, prospects for

profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities or niche, and cut-

throat competition turns the Red Ocean bloody. To an extent, product companies

opting for product convergence of their own products, and at times using off-the-

shelf products outside their portfolio, is a sign of following a Red Ocean strategy.

Examples of this are Sony and Microsoft rivals in gaming consoles. Microsoft

launched Xbox in competition to the Sony play station. But Sony kept its presence

intact by launching portable play stations and PS2. On the other hand, Microsoft

Xune succumbed to I-pod fever. Therefore, as a revival strategy, Microsoft

announced a thinner version of Xbox on Xune. Similarly, Sony announced a thinnerversion of PSP2 on their high-priced phone segments to fight competition with

Nokia.

A different viewpoint could be that convergence is also a sign of innovation and

creativity wherein producers are trying to understand future needs of their

customers and turning them to reality. For example, Blackberry started the

revolution of push email service for mobile devices. By doing this they did not just



expand the existing market for mobile devices, but also created a new market for

their products and services. However, now the same feature is available in almost

all smartphones and business phones, in different names, shapes, and sizes of

technology.

Convergence can also be adopted as a parallel strategy to be a monopolist. Byconverging products companies gain more time to conduct research and

development activities and explore the unexplored areas and choices, attain a

steady momentum to reach larger goals, and get enough space to expand their feet

in the Blue Ocean, the uncontested market space.

TANGIBLE PRODUCT CONVERGENCE

As producers we need to ask ourselves - Does it really make sense to converge two

partially related features into a single device?

When our customers decide to buy a product based on its features, they ask

themselves whether they need to check emails on mobile phone. And if the answeris yes, then they think about how much they are willing to pay for it. A customer is

happy when he gets the converged product on the original price (NOW you get 20%

more in the old price) because free is always better than cheap. Adding new

features to an existing device is therefore a strategy adopted by many producers to

retain their customers.

More and more producers are attracted towards easy convergence as now it is

easier than ever to merge two distinct products available due to factors such as

cheap software upgrades; cheap integration cost; limited hardware cost due to

availability of an existing product; availability of open source technology and

platforms to built upon; less time required to market the product; low marketing,

positioning/advertising cost; higher user acceptance; etc.

At times simple integration may result into a class of separate product, making use

of efforts made previously. Apple introduced I-touch in early 2008 just after the big

hype of I-phone and a successful 8th generation drive for I-pod. Apple successfully

merged the two products into one using the existing hardware and software. I-touch

is as good as I-phone with features like Internet browsing, email, calendar, games,

etc. sans the phone facility. It was well accepted by its users because they feel

familiar with it and have not got rid of I-phone fever yet.

Consumer-focused Convergence

Convergence does not end with producing a mix of products. And things are not so

simple as yet. Today customers are far more futuristic than the producers. They

have the fear of a technology getting obsolete. They want to remain flexible and not

get stuck with something which cannot be upgraded or replaced. Therefore, they

make their buying decisions cautiously.



For example, a customer does not want to purchase a television with inbuilt DVD

player knowing that playback formats are changing every hour and that the inbuilt

DVD player may not be able to play a certain popular DVD format in next two

months. But the same customer may buy an inbuilt video recorder with a TV set top

box. Why? Because even if video recording technology changes, it will not have a

significant effect on his current video recording habits.

Similarly, external graphics card, video card, etc. are completely merged with on-

board chipset as today’s consumers do not want these as external plug-in

hardware.

Specialized Convergence

Specialization versus multipurposity is another factor which determines the value of

a product for its consumers. A consumer may not require all features at all times

but access to some basic features of a tool certainly influences his perception and

buying decision for a product.

Producers, therefore, need to be very sensitive to the user’s context and

requirements and be selective of features to be made available in a merged

product. Putting everything inside a merged product will make it redundant and

non-usable over a period of time. For example, all smartphones provide features

such as sending and receiving emails, but it is not necessary to have a full-fledged

MS Outlook present on them as most of its users would not use it.

Independent Convergence

Initially mobile companies faced the challenge of bringing consistency in interaction

patterns in different applications or suits available on the device. Now, phonecompanies have started investing into converting mobile devices into platforms

where anybody can build utilities, applications, upgrades, plug-ins, etc. This is

leading to an independent and open convergence scenario. Nokia is trying to drive

innovation on Nokia products by bringing together mobile application developers

from all over the world to produce innovating mobile applications and services for

Nokia.

Since mobile devices started shaping up as small size computing devices, their

users stopped expecting all applications to behave in similar fashion and therefore

consistency issues among different interaction patterns is no more a big issue for

producers.

DIGITAL PRODUCT CONVERGENCE

The story may sound similar when it comes to merger of digital or Web/Internet-

based products, services and applications. Initially, there was no integration on the

Web and everything had a distinct presence. Internet users were not all that choosy

about stuff they get to use on the Internet because there were limited options



available and they were all FREE. But then Internet producers quickly realized that

“Internet users do not come for free” and therefore, to remain in the business you

need to offer the users something useful, different, exciting, and together.

Web is much faster in adopting change and demands constant self-evaluation,

benchmarking, and foresight. Internet started with a concept of informationdistribution and remained the one-way source of information before Web 2.0

penetrated and changed the concept into self creation, self identity, loose coupled,

reuse, feed, platform, and much more.

Evolution of high bandwidth networks also helped the world connect with each other

and bring together other sources of information, such as TV, radio, publishing, and

communication (mobile telephony, VOIP, video conferencing, etc.).

Social Content Revolution

Like other innovations, most innovations on the Internet are also technological

innovations. It was technology which enabled the Internet users do what theywanted to do and producers made use of it intelligently. Broadly, content and

communication have been the basic ingredients for all Web-based convergence.

All blogging websites have integrated RSS feeds to disseminate content on other

platforms/sources and mobile widgets to deliver Web content directly on mobile

devices. Content revolution has even stretched itself outside of computing devices

and has entered in products like Digital Photo Frames (DFP’s) which allow you to

sync your Flickr account to receive photo content directly on DPF and let you watch

videos directly from YouTube. Such products also allow syncing of Outlook calendar

and remind you for your next appointment.

Taking the lead, Google converged its chat feature (Gtalk) with its Web-based email,

making it a complete communication tool. Initial Gtalk/mail users were shocked to

see their email account storing Gtalk chat history but later this shock turned into a

surprise when Google integrated Gtalk think client with the email.

Internet giants like Wall Street Journal dot com (WSJ) have also made a big mindset

shift realizing the future of Internet. WSJ is now trying a major stint by changing

their image from content producers to a platform for Web users to consume, create,

collaborate, and communicate as part of social networking.

The convergence war on the Internet is fuelled even better by open sourcetechnology and service oriented architecture (SOA). These have led to the same

approach of creating platforms, as discussed earlier. For example, iGoogle as a

platform allows users to add and access different content sources and

communication in one place. Moreover, more than thousand open source

applications available on Facebook can be used as part of social networking tool to

be in touch with friends and family and do much more.

Documents

Digital Convergence & Experience