L M Ericsson is just the latest in a string of companies that have come unstuck pursuing the chimera of the synergistic convergence of computers and telecommunications: the only convergence STC Plc seems to have found in its acquisition of ICL is the ability to merge the two companies’ headquarters press offices; AT&T’s move into the computer business is little short of a disaster; Northern Telecom came badly unstuck with the acquisition of two unsuitable US computer companies (Data 100 and Sycor, for the record), and pace the Vienna is still scarcely visible in the computer business; and coming from the other direction, IBM has not been nearly as successful as it imagined it would be in the telecomms business.