Convergence is a word much loved, but also roundly abused by, the technology industry. But at CES this year we are really seeing a variety of mobile devices – MP3 player, mobile phone, digital camera, camcorder, GPS navigation device – in a single device. It’s no longer just a case of for example, a mobile phone that has some of those other features but doesn’t do them very well. Instead mobile devices are really becoming a master of all trades and reducing the amount of kit that the average gadget lover or geek has to carry around with them.

Take the Sony Cybershot G3 camera unveiled by the electronc giant’s boss Sir Howard Stringer during his keynote. It has built in Wi-Fi and a web browser so you can instantly upload and share pictures, blurring the lines between camera and a mobile internet access device.

Trying out LG’s Renoir mobile phone this afternoon I had to do a couple of double takes to make sure this wasn’t a digital camera. The touchscreen phone with 8 megapixel camera has the kind of high end features you would expect from a quality compact digital camera such as Smile Shot which will automatically take a picture when the subject smiles. Video is captured at an impressive 120 frames per second while it has built in GPS soour pictures are automatically geo-tagged. It’s expected to ship in Europe this spring.

So who will be first company to create the “Swiss Army knife” of mobile devices?