Convergence

This is where you will find all the pages tagged Convergence.

Apple TV Unboxed and Dissected

Although the less exciting of Apple's major announcements this year, Apple TV is finally upon us. As the world waits for the iPhone, it's time to look at Apple's latest entry into the convergence market. While we work on our review we thought you all might like to see the innards of the Apple TV.

AnandTech: Apple TV Part 1: Unboxed and Dissected

Phones are the new cars

The car's history suggests that the phone's future is about divergence, not convergence

Phones, like cars, are fashion items: people generally replace them long before they actually wear out. Both are social technologies that bring people together and act as symbols of independence for teenagers. And phones and cars alike promote freedom, mobility and new lifestyles, with unexpected social consequences. Both started off being defined by their precursors: early cars resembled horseless carriages, and early mobile phones looked similar to push-button fixed-line phones, only without the wire. Now both come in a bewildering range of strange shapes and sizes.

Last, and perhaps most important, the history of the car suggests that the technology industry's current mania for “converged” devices is misguided. Nobody asks what the ideal shape for a car is, or predicts that eventually all cars will look identical. Instead there are different models for different uses: roomy people-carriers for school runs, sports cars for those suffering mid-life crises, small cars for urban dwellers. Some people own more than one car, since no single vehicle meets all their needs. The same will surely be true of phones: the quest for the perfect handset that does everything is silly, since different types of users have different requirements. That suggests that handsets will become more diverse, rather than more uniform, in future: divergence, not convergence. At the same time, expect to see more people switching between different phones depending on the situation. For clues to the future of the phone, look in your driveway.

Economist.com | Articles by Subject | Technology trends

VoIP takes hold with small businesses

It may be a truism but, nonetheless, voice over IP has the capacity to transform how companies deal with their communications. Large enterprises have been dipping their toe in the water for several years and now it appears that small and medium-sized companies are following suit, says Anthony Plewes.

Investing in voice over IP has become a priority for SMEs, with some 60 per cent considering investing in it during 2007, according to a survey by silicon.com and The Bathwick Group. In terms of planned investment, it only lags behind laptop and handheld computers.

This trend is significant as VoIP lies at the heart of convergence; it allows voice to be carried over data networks, eliminating the historical divergence between voice and data.

VoIP takes hold with small businesses - silicon.com

The iPhone: Welcome To Cellular 2.0

Apple is about to enter the cellular handset market, but not with a product -- with an entirely new type of communications platform.

And -- it will not be announced this Monday. Why? Because Apple's mobile phone strategy is based on overhauling the entire legacy concept of 'phone' now being applied by all other makers and carriers. This strategy revolves around not viewing a 'phone' as a standalone piece of hardware, but as the centerpiece of a mobile communications lifestyle. And, it requires other bits and pieces to be put into play to make this grander vision a reality.

Such a multi-element platform launch cannot be done by a press release. It will require an Apple Event.

Not Your Father's Cell Phone

Apple has studiously and cautiously sat back and observed the unfolding of the cellular telephone market, and the behavior of cell phone users, smartly choosing to not enter the game until it can do so with a winning hand. Despite being loaded with advanced technology capabilities, today's mobile phone landscape is still very much still running on top of the same Cellular 1.0 topology originally launched in the mid-1980's. Handsets are still all-inclusive devices intended to be isolated islands of technology. Apple has a different vision.

Technically True: The iPhone: Welcome To Cellular 2.0

Technological convergence definition

Technological convergence is the modern presence of a vast array of different types of technology to perform very similar tasks.

The term convergence is commonly used in reference to the synergistic combination of voice (and telephony features), data (and productivity applications) and video onto a single network. These previously separate technologies are now able to share resources and interact with each other creating new efficiencies.

Also included in this topic is the basis of computer networks, wherein many different operating systems are able to communicate via different protocols. This could be a prelude to artificial intelligence networks on the internet.

From wikipedia

Is convergence unstoppable?

Convergence has also seen companies traditionally associated with access moving into the service world, in an effort to shore up their average revenue per user (ARPU) even as the cost of the average broadband subscription plummets. The telecoms operators' fear is being reduced to a transport pipe - a utility - left out in the cold while others cream off the profits from services and content.

The utility option is not to be sniffed at, though, according to the consultants. Deloitte's Tansley said: "In the utility world, prices go up as well as down. It's a luxury telcos don't enjoy today."

What is convergence anyway?

Devices, networks, services, voice, data, media, entertainment - convergence can refer to any one of these areas and is so often used its meaning can be lost. Stewart Baines explains the term's numerous definitions.

It was perhaps Nicholas Negroponte who first identified convergence. Founding the MIT Media Lab in the late 1970s he foresaw the coming together of the worlds of IT, television and movies, and print and publishing.

Decades later and convergence is all around us: in the boardroom, on the stock market, over the air and in your pocket. It's a terms used possibly too frequently and frivolously, and now has lost its prophetic meaning. Convergence can be stuck like a label on any product or service that a vendor chooses.

So just what is convergence in the technology industry?

Seventy-one per cent recognise it as the delivery of voice, video and data across all networks. Half of them think it also refers to the integration of fixed and mobile solutions. Fifty per cent again believe convergence relates to a device that provides all fixed and mobile voice and data services on a single handset.

So what is convergence anyway? - silicon.com