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No sooner had pundits identified a trend toward convergence of digital media than the backlash came, with simple ¡°divergence¡± products dedicated to a fewer functions. A typical convergence product is a mobile phone with MP3 player, digital camera, electronic dictionary, mobile TV and a game console. A typical divergence product is a telephone.
¡ß Convergence
The convergence trend led to frenzied competition over how many functions can be integrated into a single device. It allowed electronics makers to show off cutting-edge technology as well as satisfy consumer demands for sophisticated gadgetry. The portable multimedia player is a leading example. The D2 from Cowon Systems can play not only music files and movie clips but also has a mobile TV function and an electronic dictionary. The D2 is a big hit, selling 100,000 units in the first quarter this year.
Digital Cube¡¯s T3DIC also has an added electronic dictionary for Korean-English, English-Korean and English-English and sold 20,000 units since its debut at the beginning of this year. HP¡¯s personal digital assistant rx5000 is dubbed ¡°Travel Companion¡± since it provides a navigation function and is in fact more popular as a navigator than a PDA. Plus it can play multimedia files.
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HP¡¯s PDA rx5000 with a navigator function and Digital Cube¡¯s portable multimedia player T43DIC with electronic dictionaries.
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¡ß Divergence
The chief drawbacks of convergence products are that they are expensive and that few consumers will actually use all the functions integrated into their device. That is where divergence products, which get rid of needless functions and focus on the core features, come in.
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LG¡¯s KH1200 without a feature of wireless internet and Motorola¡¯s StarTAC¥² without a digital camera.
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In the mobile phone market in particular, they have been a runaway success. In March, LG electronics launched a mobile phone (LG-KH1200) that offers no access to the wireless Internet. LG removed the feature since more than half of users have no idea about the wireless Internet and have never tried to access on their mobile phones.
LG¡¯s KH1200, priced at W350,000 (US$1=W938), permits only wireless and video telephony. That is still W100,000 to W200,000 cheaper than some multifunctional handsets. An average of 2,000 LG handsets without access to the mobile Internet are being sold daily at online auction site Auction.
Samsung Electronics¡¯ Freesia is another divergence handset. Almost every mobile offers a function to connect with a big exterior memory hard drive. Not so Freesia, which thanks to the omission becomes the cheapest among Samsung¡¯s handsets, priced at W309,000. It has sold more than 450,000 units since its debut here.
Mobile handsets without a digital camera are rare these days, but Motorola boldly launched StarTAC¥² without one, concluding that what matters more is the quality of the telephone function. The company therefore used expensive parts for the phone function and still comes in for less than a multi-function gadget at W297,000.
Auction manager Moon Young-gu says sales of divergence products began increasing since the end of last year and recently the sales ratio between convergence and divergence products is almost the same.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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