Convergence is the future of marketing. Businesses today are actively adopting multi-pronged approaches. And the results are staggering! A comprehensive business perspective helps companies in not just recognizing their strengths but also in expanding their outreach to prospective customers.
What is Convergence?
Convergence, technological or digital, is the tendency for originally distinct technologies to develop and integrate themselves into a single strand for better advancement. For instance, watches, mobiles, TVs, computers, and social media networks started as separate and independent technologies but have focalized in multiple ways as little components of the overarching media, entertainment, and telecommunication industry.
How about Network Convergence?
Network convergence suggests the provision of telephone, video, and data communication services within the same network. Put simply, one business provides services for all sorts of communication. The development of technology and demand essentially spurs it. Users can access a broader range of services and can pick their favorite service provider. Basically, convergence enables service providers to offer innovative services, embrace new business models, and penetrate fresh markets.
Exciting Recent Innovations
The term digital convergence indicates the ability to view the same multimedia content from various types of devices. Thanks to the digitization of content and the development of connection methods, reading emails on your TV via a connected smartphone, watching a streaming movie on the home theater connected to the internet is a stark reality now.
Digital convergence has funneled all of life into our living room. Earlier, each unit worked independently, and networks were not as interconnected. But today, information streams on a single network and is stored, read, viewed, or listened via the same types of devices. Networks, technologies, and content converge on a single tool. And what’s the result? It saves ample time and makes life easy. Some examples of digital convergence are Google Glass, iWatches, virtual and augmented reality, smartphones, drawing tablets, etc.
Convergence Propelling New Multi-Play Business Models:
We have often heard the phrase: “The best of both the worlds”. Convergence does the same as it urges to provide the best for all related businesses. With Multi Play, the TV experience has undergone a dramatic change.
Remember the times when we were all excited to shop online? Though there was a beginner’s hesitancy, we all did purchase a lot of apparel online. But today, the same e-commerce merchant also sells groceries, appliances, books, medicine kits; you name it!
Operating on the same model, we have companies that were traditionally satellite-based but are slowly transcending the space to unify other on-demand services like OTT, Broadband, VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), etc. The businesses are modeled on various combinations of the services mentioned above.
For instance, while Company A offers Pay TV and OTT services, Company B puts forth services in Pay TV, Broadband and OTT, thus enlarging their scope of service. This way, businesses can engorge on a bigger chunk of clients while also offering the choice for multiple service selection.
Conclusion
There’s no time like the present for the idea of convergence to boost up its shell of profitability. While we are getting to see a lot of business multi-modality, the Multi-Play segment is quickly gathering pace in the digital home like never before. Various operators are actively invading each other’s space and the associated business models are getting blurry.
Nevertheless, this is leading to more dynamic and interactive content, with an ability to harness advanced advertising to target a wide-spread audience. This drive is in the hope of finding new revenue streams, integrated with subscription management, to render better returns on investments and decipher novel business models.
