The growth of use of the mobile telephone in the developed world has been staggering. It has allowed less developed countries in Eastern Europe and Africa realise an effective communications network in a matter of months and thereby leapfrog the pre-existing land-line PABX both in terms of reliability and coverage. In Western Europe countries such as Italy and the UK are seeing ownership penetration exceed 50% of the population.

By comparison the growth in PC ownership and Internet access has been slow. The mobile network providers have not been slow to recognise the communication benefits of integrating web access with mobile phones. BT Cellnet was at the forefront with its genie.co.uk web-site allowing customers to use web services on their mobile phones. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is the first step on the way to true high speed fully featured Internet access that will come with the roll-out of third generation services (3G) in 2003. It has been viable to link laptops to data-enabled phones ever since the start of the current second generation network (GSM) and many users have taken advantage of mobile internet access. Before the 3G delivery in 2003 there will be a variety of '2.5 G' enhanced services.

The Internet revolution is now un-stoppable, reaching into avery aspect of daily lives. The mobile telephone industry is sure that they will be the future platfom for delivering access to the web and all of its beneficial services. This belief is what has supported the large investments in technology development and spectrum licence purchases of the recent past.

The diagram below shows how the many aspects of our daily lives will be touched upon by this phenomenon of technology convergence.

There are 6 fundamental activities shown focusing down to one convergence output at the base of the diagram. Each activity has a timeline path of development working towards the centre. The timeline follows the historical development of each activity through to today's modern incarnation. It is an interesting exercise for you to map your own personal experience and development for each of the activity paths.

You do not need to worry about not being familiar with each discrete technology, the network providers' final solutions will be both fully integrated and easy to operate.

The key to the whole diagram is to realise the potential for cross-fertilisation between each activity path. This is the big sell and commercial impetus for the new 'connected' world economy. To give some examples:

1) You may be enjoying a broadcast concert and decide that you would like to purchase a recording to play again at your leisure, at the click of a button your device will receive a audio-video file within a matter of seconds.

2) You may be out travelling in your car, its lunch-time and you decide you would like a mediterranean style lunch, you tell your device and it quickly computes your physical location against local restaurants and communicates back a choice of places, you make your single choice and the device guides you exactly to your chosen restaurant.

3) You may enjoy amateur photography in your spare time, every time there is a media item on photography that is bookmarked and you are alerted for you to decide whether to join in.

4) You may be able to take a weeks holiday at short notice as long as you are on-line for the monthly sales meeting which you 'virtually' attend using the built -in video conferencing facility.

5) You are reading a news item when you realise a key factor crucial to the outcome is not detailed in th article, you send your device's intelligent agent away to research this missing factor.

6) You are looking around a new property deciding whether it would suit you and your partner, your partner is particulary fussy about gardens. Your partner has to be in the office that day so for the 20 minute estate agent tour they come along seeing the property through the eye of your device and they direct you to each four corners of the garden. The tour is recorded for comparative play back against other properties seen.

The convergence phenomenon is moving the goal posts for many different industries. The most obvious effects are happening in Consumer Electronics, its not uncommon to see mobile phones that play broadcast radio stations or MP3 music files. PDA's with bulit in mobile phones and CCD cameras built in. Companies that use to think that their speciality is audio or video or telephony or GPS or whatever are being forced to create alliances of knowledge to deliver the new integrated solutions consumers need. The Media Industry is also in throws of great change as the traditional lines between terrestrial, cable and web broadcast become blurred. The Computer Industry is moving towards Application Service Provision to take away the user 'headaches' of upgrade, maintenance and a real shortage of IT workers.

A business needs to know that it has selected the right development partner based upon their Intellectual Property, their strategic direction and their corporate ethos.

Why not let us help you identify that Alliance Industry and development partner

back