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Communication continues to come together while state-of-the-art technology is diverging

By Molly Jamieson


When I purchased my iPhone over twelve months and a half gone, I was under the impression that technology was going to be dominated by Apple.

I had email, Internet access, music listening, watching flicks, receiving and sending telephone calls and SMS message all under the one device.

In addition, social media communication using Facebook and Twitter is also used with the same piece of technology.

Having the ability to synchronise the iPhone with the iPad and Mac or P.C made life simple. Limiting myself only to Apple made products enabled all of these technologies to converge, or so I thought.

Then I noticed the younger generation were adopting Blackberry devices and using BBM as a text-messaging device and kids were using Facebook and Twitter on that platform.

With business providers such as Adobe Business Catalyst grouping different technologies under the one platform, after about a year of this so-called consumer technology convergence, I realized this was not the case.

Take a teenager. They have a Blackberry for instant messaging, Facebook and Twitter. Then they're going onto their Xbox and start in game talks with mates there. And also they could purchase credits to download flicks from their games machines.

Then the kids could employ a Nintendo hand held games console to talk on there too.

Then you have kids who've got the Blackberry for their communication but also possessing an iPod Touch so that they could listen to their message and play the games from the app store.

It's not that unusual for a teenage kid to own a Blackberry, laptop computer, Xbox, iPod and Nintendo and use all of these separate devices for differing types of communication and entertainment with different groups or kinds of chums.

As much as brands such as Apple or Google or even Microsoft try and create a monopoly the truth is the way of communication isn't technology platform dependent.

The devices their chums and peers are using still strongly influencing youngsters. And youngsters still have different sorts of pals they hang out with based upon technology. Not that different to the youngsters of the 1980's who hung out with different friends for sport, music, socialising and studying.

I doubt any brand will create a complete monopoly. Technology will continue to diverge whilst the way of communication will converge primarily based on what folk have an interest in.




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