Other analysts believe that that true convergence requires a synergy between services that doesn’t yet exist. “In reality, what we’re seeing now is more displacement than anything,” argues Entner. “Nobody has yet found a way take these three or four discrete boxes and put more than a wrapper around them. Sending you one bill is not convergence. We haven’t yet found the thing that glues the four pieces together, meshes them so that something comes out of it that’s more than the sum of its parts.”
“I think it will be a gradual process of people finding the services and devices that are becoming melded,” says Chamberlain. “You don’t have to be in your home to watch TV. You don’t have to be sitting in front of your computer to have an IM conversation. Those are things that we are almost going to have to discover on our own rather than have them shown to us.”
But most industry experts believe that convergence is coming. “It’s still very early days for convergence,” says Parker. “We are experiencing today’s world of mobile music and mobile video, but the future will be mobile everything. All media, content and applications are on a path toward mobilization. That path
will require convergence.”
“At the heart of the convergence concept is the idea of convenience, wherein end users can access their desired media wherever they are using the most appropriate
device for their location.”
Tammy Parker
North America,
Informa Telecom & Media
