The recent release of the new Kindle eBook reader has me thinking (yeah, it had to happen again!) about device convergence. In the olden days, people (well, nerds really) carried a PDA, mobile phone, computer and whatever other gadgets took their fancy (HP scientific calcular anybody?). Since those days in 80s and 90s we've seen a marked shift.

The IT industry tends to move between extreme position. Think about insourcing vs outsourcing, off the shelf vs bespoke development and so on. Depending on the economic climate and what consultants and analysts thought they could get away with everyone seemed to oscillate between some extreme view or another. One of the debates that we used to have was the argument between having a "best of breed" device vs a generalist. This of it as the jack of all trades. It wasn;t an "expert" in any one thing but it did many things competently.

Back in early 2007 Steve Jobs mesmerised the world with his reality distortion field when he announced the first iPhone. In effect, what hed described was a converged device that fused a computer, phone and PDA. What made the iPhone different was that Apple simply did the convergence better than anyone else.

I've not used a Kindle but it looks to be a great device. That said, I doubt I'd buy one as it's too big for me to carry in my normal kit.

The iPhone's biggest weakness, in my opinion, is with messaging. The lack of a unified inbox and search are serious deficiencies that desperately need to be addressed in the iPhone 3.0 software. And let's not get started on the lack of true push email. In that regard, the BlackBerry simply smashes the iPhone.

For web browsing, there's no doubt in my mind that a decent netbook would do the job. I have an Eee PC 900 series in the lounge room at home for just that purpose.

When one looks at the growth of mobile phone sales it's obvious that the fastest growing segment is the smartphone category. iPhones, BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile are no longer just for nerds. The technology has moved along such that smaller devices, while still requiring some compromises and changes in our behaviour, can do many of these tasks. They may not so them as well as we'd like but they do them either well enough or very well.

It's clear to me, and I suggest that sales figures strongly support this view, that while single function devices like the Kindle will continue to sell profitably but that they will only ever be niche devices. The vast majority of consumers will prefer to have a device that can do many things well rather than one or two things brilliantly.