At this week’s Financial Times World Telecoms Conference in London, I raised an interesting issue at the end of a panel session on “convergence”. As an industry we pride ourselves in TLA (three letter acronyms) and buzzwords, but the whole session was talking about convergence this etc.
I suggested to the panel (as I have been saying at recent media interviews) that it’s really about convenience and not convergence. If you ask the average consumer in the street if they want “convergence” you won’t be shocked with the strange looks you receive. If however you ask them if you want convenience (from a phone provider), they will probably hug you!
The panel actually agreed with me, and added that “we all don’t really understand what convergence really is either”.
In the end, it’s about convenience, not convergence – as an industry let’s design things that consumers want, not what we want them to have.
