Email again delivers a personal message and was also an established service on Internet before being offered on smart phones. It co-exists with voice on smart phones but is not exactly prospering.  It is in fact surviving on them for the lack of synergy (Mantra 2 of the Six Value Mantras). If email had been first introduced on a mobile phone, before it got established on Internet, it would have literally struggled all through.

The success of Blackberry comes from the fact that its value proposition that initially got established - a device that provides remote access to emails was very crisp and focused. RIM further enhanced the focus by offering gadgets that synergized well with the email functionality – building a value proposition that earned it a name “crackberry”. Voice on Blackberry is a secondary applications and a large number of its users that I know, carry yet another phone to make phone calls.

The usual challenge to technology companies is to differentiate their products and in the process often resort to gimmicks like convergence. The service providers like mobile operators also become partners to these gimmicks to increase their uptake. The gullible users are often the victims, who get carried by the newer convergent devices. The winners are the technology companies and not the service providers as the former are able to sell their technology gadgets, however, the service providers land up achieving very little - convergence drives very little extra traffic – adding very little to ARPU.

Convergence excites for it is able to offer high end features to a common man at very little extra cost – thanks to the advancements in microprocessor technology. It also excites masses to invest on it, little realizing that they will hardly use the secondary features during the lifecycle of its usage. Convergence is in fact a cherished dream of engineers to achieve optimum resource utilization and my experience also tells that pushing convergence of diverse services is counter productive.

I have innovated management theories to design and effectively manage high technology convergence in the market place and would be happy to discuss convergence related issues with my readers and can be reached on mikegauba@gmail.com or +61 422 144 996