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A comment in my article about Amazon.com's MP3 download store took me to task for picking nits about aspects of the service, especially about the quality of the usage experience. Fair enough--one man's nit is another person's show-stopper. But when it comes to convergence--hardware, software and services all coming together as they do in digital music, for example--it's taking care of those nits that are crucial to delivering satisfying music. Good enough is just not good enough unless you are happy being an also-ran.

Why? Because convergent systems are tremendously complex--both to create and potentially to use. The trick is to hide that complexity to the user so that it appears easy. Doing that requires huge amounts of work and difficult choices and, yes, paying attention to seemingly small details. Cumulatively these small details add up to either ease the use of the system or to hinder it. Look at how many poorly executed solutions to the digital music system have come and gone over the years. The basic idea of most of them was probably solid; where they fell down was in taking care of the details: ease of discovering music, rules for DRM, pricing, ease of transaction, ease of interface, and so on.

Being trained as a designer I'm perhaps more fussy about these differences than many people. It's hard for me to say, as I've been looking at the world this way for so long. But a recent article by innovation guru Michael Schrage reminded me of how far apart designers are from most people in how they look at the manufactured world, including things like convergent media systems. Schrage was participating on the annual IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America) and BusinessWeek design awards, and the experience was so unexpected that he says he literally will never look at "designed" objects the same way again.

By far the most striking revelation for me was the collective designer obsession with detail. You've no doubt heard the phrase "God is in the details" or "The devil is in the details"? This design jury had heaven and Earth covered. You can talk "brand" or "vision" or "concept" or "insight" or "elegance" until you're blue in the face, but world-class designers care about how those ideals are expressed in the details. Something that I would dismiss as a niggling detail the designers would say revealed the essential point they were trying to make. Great design is about the ordering and intention of details that you can--or aren't supposed to--see and feel.

This is why Apple is held in such high regard by designers--its unstinting attention to detail. Nothing is overlooked. That doesn't mean they get everything right all the time by any stretch (Dan Saffer at Adaptive Path is complaining that iTunes is not a very good application, for example), but you can always tell that things have been thought about and paid attention to. If you're playing in the same pond as Apple, they set the bar for experience because of how they sweat these details, and that forces you to do the same.

What was worrying about Schrage's article is that it reminded me of how little conscious attention most people involved in bringing these convergent systems into the world have about these small but crucial details. That's probably why Apple has had a pretty much uncontested run for the last five years.

Way back in the dark ages--before cell phones, reality TV, or social networks--there was big iron. In those archaic times, computers were actually used for computing, as opposed to watching porn or idiotic video clips. The computing giants of the day included IBM, Digital Equipment, Unisys (the marriage of Sperry and Burroughs), Data General, and Wang Laboratories.

The transition to personal computing and networking changed all that. IBM and Unisys survived by refocusing on services. The others didn't fair so well. Markets change. Companies that change with them survive. Those that anticipate change do better still. Those that resist change or change too slowly go the way of the dinosaur.

So, in the '90s, Cisco Systems, Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems became the new system powerhouses. IBM was still very much in the game. And of course there was Microsoft and Intel, owners of much of the PC's intellectual property.

In recent years, we've seen personal communications and consumer electronics overtake computers to grab the high-tech limelight. Cool devices like TiVo, PlayStation, BlackBerry, Treo, Razr, iPod, Slingbox, and iPhone have taken center stage.

Waiting in the wings are robotics, nanotechnology, and virtual reality--technologies with the potential to really change the way we live, down the road.

So why the history lesson? Because, it helps me set the stage for what's next. We're clearly in the midst of another big transition. As an industry, we've been talking about convergence for so long the word has become almost meaningless. Nevertheless, convergence--whatever that means--is upon us.

The big question on my mind is this: which companies will be the new power brokers of the post-computing era of digital convergence?

First, let's look at today's market leaders. We've already discussed computing; now add consumer electronics, mobile-handset technology, video gaming, Internet software, and various odds and ends. That gives us a laundry list of companies that looks something like this:

Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Compaq, Dell, eBay, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Palm, Qualcomm, Research In Motion, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony, Sun, Texas Instruments, Yahoo.

Now we determine the key criteria for leadership in the new digital age. Here's my stab at that:

Intellectual capital. That includes a broad range of technologies and design expertise, plus the ability to integrate those diverse technologies into innovative platforms.

Breakthrough marketing. That includes powerful brand loyalty and recognition, coupled with innovative promotion and market development for groundbreaking products and services.

Content delivery. This is about the ability to develop creative relationships with leading media content companies, and deliver that content through a spectrum of consumer channels, worldwide.

Then we take all those companies, their market leadership positions, their capabilities with respect to the three criteria, add some intangibles, and voila, we have our answer. In my opinion, these five companies are best positioned to be the giants of the post-computing era of digital convergence:

Sony
Sony has a leadership position in more markets than any other company. It also meets all three criteria, despite an inspirational drought as of late. The entertainment business and an early lead in robotics certainly don't hurt, either. Sony is in the best position of the five.

Apple
Not so apparent from the data, but Apple has several leadership products and a demonstrated ability to create new markets and category killers. The company that Jobs built also meets all three criteria and nobody can claim better marketing. Apple's on a roll, what more can I say.

Samsung
This company has come a long way and now boasts a powerful brand and leadership in several key categories. Samsung also meets two key criteria and is working on the last one. The Korean giant is certainly firing on all cylinders as it continues on its blistering trajectory.

Microsoft
While Microsoft has been struggling for a foothold in convergence products, the game is far from over. With a powerful brand, a huge installed base, $40 billion in cash, leadership in several key markets, and moderate strength in all three criteria, I wouldn't rule out the software giant.

Google
Here's where intangibles come into play. Although the company has never developed or marketed a product per se, it has the brand, the channel, and the cash-generating machine to make a serious go of it. It all depends on where Google, the youngest and the long shot of the five, goes from here and how well it executes.

Of course, there is a big caveat to all this. The leaders of tomorrow may not even exist today. Back in the days of big iron, nobody could have predicted that you'd be reading this post on a Web site with your eyes glued to a flat-panel display on your networked PC.

If history repeats itself, there's a high probability that a new market, category, or product will set the consumer world on fire. If digital convergence ends up in the virtual reality domain, for example, then the next Sony might develop in Second Life. Stranger things have happened.

The point, of course, is that your start-up may challenge Sony, Apple or Samsung for the title of 800-pound gorilla of digital convergence.

CHIBA, Japan--Remember convergence? The idea that the TV and conventional technologies would merge? It came out about the same time as that series ER and has aged about as well in North America.

A TV phone in action.

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)

In Japan, it's another story. Watching TV on your PC is actually quite common. A huge number of desktops and notebooks come with TV tuners and people actually use them, according to several residents.

"There are a lot of ads for TV PCs," he said Yasutoshi Magara, managing director of Microsoft Japan. Sharp Electronics, he noted, just came out with a PC-TV combo with a 42-inch screen.

Part of the surge here relies on local factors. There isn't a lot of spare space in most cities in Japan. As I type, the chair I sit upon is butting up against a suitcase on the floor, for instance. Combining the TV and the PC screen into one slim package makes sense.

TV on cell phones has also become big. Japan started offering 1Seg, a service that lets you get free digital TV channels on your phone, in April 2006, according to Sharp's Myuki Nakayama. Ten million TV phones from all manufacturers have been bought by consumers since then, she added.

I haven't seen this much pre-launch interest in a consumer technology product since Windows 95 emerged one Chinese calendar cycle ago.

People are camping out in line for it. Newspapers are devoting entire sections to it. There's even a backlash against the hype...and an emerging backlash against the backlash. And unlike the case with Windows 95, everybody's blogging it.

So what do I think? Success or failure? Or something in between?

Looking at the Apple demonstration video, there's no doubt that the iPhone demos well. If it works as advertised--no strange glitches with the screen or slow data transfer times--it will be fun to use. It's also going to be expensive, according to this excellent TCO analysis by Engadget, although not out of line with similar data plans.

But design and UI and cost and general coolness...these aren't the real questions. The real question: can the iPhone break the convergence rule? That rule, proven time and time again, is that consumers (not necessarily businesses) prefer products with one primary function over products with multiple equally weighted functions. It's OK to add a secondary function that doesn't get in the way--adding an inexpensive camera to a cell phone, for instance. But as soon as you try to combine two previously separate devices, consumers react with indifference at best.

Recent history's littered with examples. TVs with built-in VCRs. Combination VCR-DVD players. Integrated stereo systems. WebTV and its interactive relatives. (Surf the Web from my TV...no thanks, I'm watching TV.) The Media Center PC. (Why do I need a PC to record my TV programs?) Most recently, look at game consoles: Sony and Microsoft packed their latest consoles with multimedia functionality, and the cheaper, strictly-gaming Wii is outselling both.

I'm not aware of any in-depth market research about this issue, but I have plenty of opinions about why this is the case. Single function devices are simpler to use. (Although the iPhone's touchscreen addresses the UI clumsiness of many multifunction phones--tiny alphanumeric keyboards, for instance.) When they break, you lose less and they're easier to repair. There's a perception--not always correct--that a device that tries to do too many things won't do any of them well.

More specifically with the iPhone, I'm not sure the features it's combining gain any particular benefit by being combined. If you're a music fan, you probably already have an iPod (or a competitor...no, scratch that, you probably have an iPod), and if you don't, you can get 10 times the capacity of the $599 8GB iPhone for a little more than half its price. And you can't even use the iPhone to download music over the air (yet...I think this is an eventual no-brainer, given that competitors are already doing it). If you're interested in mobile Web access and e-mail, there are plenty of laptops for less than $700, and they do more and are easier to type on. And as for a cell phone...aren't they already too complicated?

Of course, there's one huge glaring exception to the convergence rule: the personal computer, with more than 200 million sold every year. (Note that I wrote "personal computer," which includes all brands of boxen and OSs, not "PC.") But the personal computer truly is an all-in-one device--used by consumers and businesses, for entertainment and productivity and communciations and arts and science, with a billion add-ons available to extend its functionality. A personal computer offers so many functions at such a low price--less than a standard-sized refrigerator--that it almost seems foolish not to own one. Not so with the iPhone. The iPhone is a stripped-down laptop computer, combined with a cell phone, with a fairly low-capacity music player added in. And an amazingly cool design and unique user interface on top.

Will Apple sell 10 million iPhones this year? Probably, barring some disastrous bug or defect. Will it keep Apple's growth curve going? Yes, for a while. But I don't see it having the same cultural impact or market penetration as the iPod, or the original Macs. Or, for that matter, as Windows 95.