If there was ever any doubt in your mind that the consumer electronics market is totally pushing toward all sorts of convergence, this latest acquisition will help to remove much of that doubt. We know Telus for its cell phone service, but the “future-friendly” company has just announced that it has purchased Black’s Photo.

The only reason why I would step foot into a Black’s Photo retail store was if I wanted a photo frame or perhaps a nice photo album that I could use as a gift. I’m not the kind of person to print out my pictures, but there are lots of people who still do. The quality you get from “real” photo finishing is still better than most print-at-home solutions.

I’m not entirely sure why Telus would target Black’s for an acquisition, but it does help to provide some more retail presence and it could pave the way for some interesting convergence. For instance, they could load up Telus phones with an app that would send camera phone photos directly to Black’s for printing right from the handset. That’d be nice for people who want prints of those pictures.

So, the next time you walk into Black’s, you can pick up a new Nikon DSLR, a tripod, a photo frame, and a BlackBerry? The total price for buying all 113 Canadian locations, along with everything else to do with Black’s, was quoted at $28 million.

Source: MobileSyrup