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Low-Cost Simputer Fails to Win Indians' Interest
prostoalex writes "The Associated Press looks at the Indian low-cost Simputer project and registers it as a failure. Picopeta sold 2,000 units over the past year, while Encore Software sold 2,000 Simputers. Only 10% of the devices were bought for rural areas, which the device was originally designed for. The reason? The companies need to sell quite a few simplistic monochrome devices to allow for the low price tag of $200. Meanwhile, anyone can buy a powerful device with a color screen for $199 from a major vendor."
D'oh! If you have the choice between making it cheap by removing features XOR making it cheap from mass production with full features, choose to keep the features.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
...that this submission is an advertisement in disguise.
Opinions expressed herein do not reflect the views of Merck & Co., and sorry about the heart attacks.
But if it is for rural villages how do they expect to power these units. And what about dust and computer illiteracy, those things would be bigger obstacle than cost in general.
Move on people nothing funny here.
Windows PocketPC 2005?
Ok didn't this happen with the 486DX and 486SX? The problem is the price, you can sell anything if you price it correctly. Even to the point of having to destroy perfectly working CPU's to keep up demand.
Racist? The casinos have been very profitable for the Indians. If I were an Indian, I'd love them, too.
"Why would I want a computer for my Sims," one man asked. "Two hundred dollars seems like a lot for imaginary people."
No need for the racist remarks.
The post you were replying to was obviously a troll - but what the hell was racist about it?
You mean a project to create a low-priced commodity failed to compete successfully against something that is already entrenched as a low-priced commodity? That's unpossible!
I wonder what this means for my own startup company. We're going to make a lot of money selling inexpensive versions of pencils. Since people all over the world spend almost nothing at all for pencils, and there's really not much opportunity to improve a pencil, I'm sure my company will be a great success.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
So you can't get support if you import one. Plus I doubt they'll be localised appropriately.
Also, prices vary region to region - the same PDA costs 1/3 more in the UK for instance.
But sir, have you ever tried Dell Brand Computers(TM). They are reliable and priced just right. Thats why I recommend Dell Brand Computers(TM) to all my friends and neighbors even though the little plastic bits may start to fall off after a brief amount of time. I find Dell Brand Computers(TM) to be absolutely rock solid and reliable despite the few times that they have destroyed all of my data or spewed toxic gasses into the air. I just think everyone should know that Dell Brand Computers(TM) are absolutely fabulous and they make me horny! go buy a Dell Brand Computers(TM) now! NOW!! before they're all GONE!!
Starsucks
nothing, but he's an oversensitive, brainwashed twit who viewed it as such.
I register my rather large Simpling (you know, the one above my two boulders) as a complete success!
Now that's the way to make manufactured "aid" systems. Doing the same with computers would be simple.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's an old design that barely compares with the lowest end Ipaq-like handhelds. A 200MHz BW screen Simputer should cost (much) less than $100.
The only advantage I see using the Simputer is the use of ubiquitous AA cells instead of the uber pricey, proprietary and failure prone Li-Ion batteries.
Not every effort to do a Good Thing is going to work out as one might hope. My hat's off to the people who did this project.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Indians are caucasians, which makes it even more puzzling, and confusing.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Depends on where you're from, I would guess. Here in Northern California, Indian casinos a big issue (or problem, depending on your point of view).
But, yeah. Obviously a troll. And an uninformed one, at that.
Is anyone actually surprised? Look how Windows XP Starter kit has been doing!
or frogurt.
How we know is more important than what we know.
THIS is what they should have sold over there. This is a 16MB Handheld PDA w/Built-in 56K Modem people! And the price (which is the most important thing) is BELOW 25 BUCKS.
Before modding this down as libertarian propaganda, do me the favor of actually thinking about it.
This doesn't strike me as suprising at all. The free market is absolutely ruthless in attracting folks to markets, and it's absolutely ruthless in pressuring them to drive their prices down. (As the joke goes: the businessman spends his evenings on his knees, praying for prices to rise, and all day at his desk, working to make them go down).
A do-gooder non-profit, no matter how wonderful and benevolant, just doesn't have the incentives in place to motivate the same sort of EFFECTIVE action. I'm sure all of the people involved had their hearts in the right place, and they prob even worked reasonably hard...but the outcome was entirely predictable.
TJIC
You just posted you dolt, so no you didn't.
Having never been in India, but I did spend a lot of time in third-world Africa, I think the biggest issue is that the third world does not really get a huge gain from computers. The typical third-worlder does not need to write spreadsheets or take digital pics and does not have an urge to contact his buddies over IM. The typical third-worlder does not have a phone (heck hasn't even used one) has no running water or electricity. $200 is a lot of money - might be a whole familie's yearly income. Would you buy a PDA for $50K? Rather spend it on some food/medicine or a new sheet of plastic to put on the roof.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm not surprised it failed, but that ain't the reason. When we're talking about people who don't know a computer from their elbow, Windows is a niche OS too. They don't even know what an OS *is*.
Clear all the madness, I'm not a racist
Preach to teach to all
'Cause some they never had this
Number one, not born to run
About the gun...
I wasn't licensed to have one
The minute they see me, fear me
I'm the epitome - a public enemy
Used, abused without clues
I refused to blow a fuse
They even had it on the news
Don't believe the hype...
I had blogged about Amida approximately a year back. The conclusion: serious marketing and pricing issues.
More than mere navel gazing.
the Jackito (aka Tactile Digital Assistant). You can't help but wonder why in the world someone would buy one of these devices when you can get so much more hardware for less cost. I guess it's a matter of national pride with these "homebrew" products (Jackito = France / Simputer = India).
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
To me there would be a clear case of market economy here: rich company wants to throw away computers. Poor school in third world desperately needs computers, and is willing to pay an amount > 0.
What is the main bottle neck? Shipping costs? Even for laptops? Security risks with data on old harddisks? It cannot be support or licencing issues, as the locals often surely would be more than willing to use a free OS, which they support themselves.
But AC posts don't get rid of the mod points. They're anonymous afterall.
just because someone mentions guns doen't make it a troll, the WWII "liberator" pistol was real.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I can't tell if that $199 Dell can support USB adequately or not - too many PDA devices know how to be a USB slave that can be updated by a computer, but don't know how to be a USB master than can drive printers, modems, etc. But it wouldn't be surprising to see hardware that can do that well in a similar price range - if not now, then wait 3-6 months.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's kind of like all of those Internet Appliance things that didn't sell back during the boom, but were fun for hackers to pick up cheap and modify.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Markets and trade will do more to raise standards of living than charity ever has. Who wants a simputer when you can get a fully featured Dell for less? That's capitalism, folks. Products generally get cheaper, better and more plentiful as time goes by.
Why do these inexpensive devices always look like cheap toys though? I can't quite put my finger on why, but I feel more comfortable using the form factor of the more expensive models over these things you can buy in a supermarket even though it appears to be about as feature filled as a palm from 4-5 years ago.
For the same reason I fail to be interested in any of the offerings from sharper image ever.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
They appear sell it only to verticals, such as the army:
l e_id=2701&cat_id=908
http://www.cxotoday.com/cxo/jsp/article.jsp?artic
Their target, the average indian faermer/villager, won't understand how to use this device or see any value in it (probably cause there isnt much value in it).
Things that an average indian would value:
Free cell phone. Money.
Now, a better approach is to provide normal solar powered computers to kids in rural india so that they develop an interest and skills in using technology. Ideally there would be free Wifi zones all over india... this is actually easier to implement in India than the US because of the high population density.
You can't just give alien technology to people and then expect that they'll figure it out.
Look at it realistically. Some old P2 is going to do a rural place far away no good. $16-$32 just to ship it there. Then plug it in where exactly?
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Not all Indians are Caucasian. Come Chinese are caucasian which makes things more puzzling and confusing.
Anyone could have bought a $99 PC at Fry's this weekend and picked up a used CRT for less than 10 bucks. Why bother making a special low-cost PC when regular low-end PCs costs are low?
http://chrono.posterous.com/
collecting old computers and parts, refurbing them and installing an OSOS. If it's donated then yay, if it's to be sold the profits could go to funding oss
Maybe they should try to outsource the design to the USA :-)
Table-ized A.I.
As to the TV habits and small-town friendliness, it's the same way in much of the United States. The more things change...
I'm convinced that the main differences between third-world countries and the US don't lie in culture, lifestyle, etc. They lie mainly in diet and medicine. And the likelihood of political upheaval, but we have the same thing every 2, 4, or 6 years (and it's gradual enough that nobody has to nail anyone to anything to accomplish it).
If I didn't love steak and constitutionally-protected liberty so much, I would almost prefer to live in a third-world country - they have more of those small, friendly villages than we do, with the Internet and all.
Linux-based systems like the Simputer have a problem competing against Windows/x86 machines in third world markets.
The problem is that Windows-compatible software is effectively free, due to piracy. And, even if it isn't strongly marketed locally, that software is made more attractive by all the money spent promoting it elsewhere.
There are several reasons, IMO, that simputer failed, or things like it will continue to fail. 1. lack of awareness: Something like 99% of the country hasn't heard of what a simputer is, and some 70% of the country doesn't know what a computer is either or what it is used for. You introduce a cell phone to a man who doesn't know what a landline is, or what a phone is, for that matter and you will realize. 2. Lack of government support: Never heard of any state govt using state owned media to propegate the use of computer. 3. Industry backing (lack thereof). No industry, to my knowledge ever backed simputer. 4. Electricity. However small, simputer will still need power to work. The place where I was born and raised has power 3 hours in the morning and 4 in the evening during which people are busy trying to make as much use of power as they can, like to heat water, watch TV/listen to radio. Not that simputer is dead. The product might be, but I get a feeling that the idea will continue to remain alive.
LETS send ALL the INDIANS back to AFRICA!!!!! WHITE POWER!
the simputer seemed to be the only option for a (low priced) PDA with linux and a USB host port.. I bet there's a lot of early adopters in the 'first world' that are willing to buy the first batch in order to archieve the volume they want..
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Let's be honest...can people who don't know how to read need PDA's?
If a learning tool was the objective then why not just use an old terminal.
A live distro even would have been better, as it would reduce hardware costs to what ever was available.
It would be insanity for Indians to spend $2000 on a round trip plane ticket from India just to buy a $99 computer at Fry's.
You didn't bother reading who these computers were targeted to, huh?
MIT's Multimedia lab led by Negroponte is working on a $100 laptop project for poor people that seems to have a fair amount of financial backing. More here
Help fight continental drift.
Nice thought to bridge the technical divide created by poverty and government policies that are just this side of malfeasance. Half the planet has yet to use a phone and they're trying to get rural peoples to spend 2/3 of their gross annual income on a device that will somehow make up for the shortfalls of their poverty and lack of access to education. They may be poor but they are not stupid.
a slut did tulsa
I'm really not surprised this wasn't a success. A lot of companies blindly go after "emerging markets" without really understanding them. In particular, price isn't as big of a deal as some people think it is. For example, people vastly underestimate the buying power of people in India. Even if everyone was able to afford a computer, what would they do with them? They have no training, no experience, and no support infrastructure.
Interestingly enough, there are some business models that work well. Take the "village PC" model. One person in the village buys a computer (possibly with village assets), supports it, rents out time on it, etc. Everyone in the village, regardless of their technical expertise, benefits from the technology. This model has also worked well for mobile phones.
Last quarter, there were two good talks on technology for emerging and "invisible" markets here at the University of Washington. The first is a talk by Eric Brewer (UC Berkeley) entitled The Case for Technology for Developing Regions. An abstract, video, and MP3 of the talk are available from that site. The other talk was given by John Sherry of Intel's People and Practices Research Group. PowerPoint slides, an abstract, a suggested reading list, a discussion wiki, and more can be found here. I highly encourage you to check these talks out.
with all the millions of spare parts (warehouses filled with PII chips) in the world do third workd countries really need to settle for custom stripped down machines when they could build full machines that are a few generation out of date for about the same price...
there must be loads of inventory that companies would love to have a tex-efficient way of getting rid of...
Get your torrents...
In other news...
Article About How Low-Cost Simputer Fails to Win Indians' Interest Fails to Win Slashdotters' Interest
Seriously, umm, if the situation is that someone found that an entire country failed to find a particular thing interesting, what would be the reasoning for thinking that Slashdotters would find that uninteresting thing worth reading about?
Do companies get it yet? Rural or less economically powerful countries don't want watered down computers. They don't want to be treated like second class computer users. They don't want a gimped version of windows when they can pirate a fully functional one. They don't want cute small, yet utterly useless computers. Those who don't have computers now, either cannot afford a several hundred dollar computer, or cannot afford even $200. And those without electicity don't have a need for one.
And from my talks with the CEO and the chairman, it seems that Picopeta is no longer targeting the rural Indian but the Indian middle class (about 200m people). The device will be positioned as a mobile computer which provides anywhere internet access and provides an easy way to access data on the go. Simputer can act as the USB master which allows one to connect it directly to printers, cameras, scanners etc. Additionally, Simpiter can be attached to Reliance/Tata mobile phones (CDMA based mobile networks in India, but which provide internet access of upto 160 kbps at fairly cheap prices, and also provide full mobility). This makes it fairly useful for people who have to visit client sites. Additionally, picopeta can offer corporate customers repair at component level (i.e. if you break the LCD of Simputer, someone will be at hand to change it for you), which most other PDA manufacturers don't.
There are still some problems with the plan though but I will say Picopeta and Simputer are not quite dead yet.
For some facts about this bullshit simputer
.don't have access to that account anymore.
The sep 2003 simputer slashdot article.
I think it's similar to the famous Yugo failure. The flawed premise in "cheap computer" or "cheap car" strategy is that people in the market for sub-$5000 car or sub-$200 computer are actually willing to buy them brand new. No, they are not. People in the market for a cheap car will rather go for a 5-year old Ford. People in the market for a cheap computer will either buy something second hand or try to build their own system. Especially that you still have better service options with a 5-year Ford than a brand new Yugo - or a second hand Dell or Compaq than a brand new Simputer.
The Simputer is not late or too expensive.
The Simputer folks thought they would be first to market in villages but they will not. The village community computer will be first; allowing the village klerk and village people access to government sites, register their property, get small loans, lookup market prices. As this computer will reveal awareness of who has advantage of having access to the internet they will form a daily or weekly cue at the free access hours.
Those in the cue are the ones who want to loan for a simple long lasting handheld with wireless access so they are sure they will get their needed information on time instead of missing todays timeframe of internet acces. They will have financial gain by having a Simputer as they can read information as soon as they get close to the the internet access point.
I think the Simputer sales can catch on after the currently successful wave of the village community PC with internet access project goes countrywide. And it is going countrywide and it will be this project which will reveal the usefulness of internet for local farmers. And when they realise they want to prepare their data at home they are ready to buy a Simputer.
Here is where old computers go to die - places like Guiyu, China, which serve as dumping grounds for high-tech trash with disastrous effects on the environment. Pretty scary stuff.
Whoosh!
If they have a TV, they need a computer that'll use THAT as the screen. Remember, Amaericans didn't jump straight from desktop calculators to handhelds... and computers you plug into your TV were a big part of how we got here because they could be built *cheaply*.
India needs Amigas.
No, I'm not kidding. Coolest computer ever. Tremendously capable OS, and you could build one out of three chips cheaper than a Palm III today.
[OP] This is a 16MB Handheld PDA w/Built-in 56K Modem people!
[billstewart] But it's really a $100 device that didn't sell
The following tidbit may indicate why these things are such a bargain:
Notes
This product was tested and it may crash your ISP...
...connection or amount of email you may have received.
Any explicit mention of potential ISP issues should raise a red flag.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Most people who can afford it (and even some who can't) have a cell-phone. Sometimes I suspect it is more of a status symbol than anything because just because most people can afford to buy a cell-phone...few can afford to buy the air-time needed to actually make use of it. Regardless, landline phone are pretty much usesless in this part of the world.
Computers on the other hand are (I think) still a tool for the rich. Those who do have access to computers mostly use them for email, and not much more at the moment. Infact most people I know are much faster typers on their cell phones to sent text msges than they are on a regular keyboard.
IMO any device that is so called "stripped-down" or is missing parts is doomed to fail. People are just as intelligent here as anywhere... it is just that most are extremely poor and lack the education to make use of such things.
One last thought. We have the technology now to give people computers, power them with solar power, generators, even a treadmill... the greater problem is giving people a reason to want to use these things. Why does a subsistance farmer need a word processor? Implementation is easy, its the long term sustainabily that is the hard part.
I like to compare working in a developing county much like space travel, you have to bring everything with you because you never know what might happen. Don't even get me started on the woes of trying to get decent internet access! ;)
Up to the mid-1990s telecommunications were a state monopoly in Brazil, and a fixed phone cost the equivalent of $7000 in some areas, a cell phone went for about $4000. Today you can get a fixed phone installed for about $15 and a cell phone for $70 in ten installments.
So what, will you ask? How does this help someone who has no running water? Take a typical illiterate single mother living in a slum? It means she can advertise and sell whatever skill she has. It will still be very low-paying jobs, because she has no sophisticated job training, but she can get more for it. Instead of working for one employer at $100/month she can do jobs for different people at $15/day.
Technology is always useful. And technology that enables one to be more productive is always better than handouts. There are many well-meaning people in the rich countries who would better learn this very simple lesson. Give poor people a technology to become more productive workers and they will get their own running water.
spaces not working..typos...crappy formatting... /i need sleep.....
Consumers rejecting intentionally dumbed-down computers is an old phenomena. IBM tried to introduce a "student computer" called the PC Junior in the 1980s that received great ridicule. It had lower compacity in every component, not to mention the infamous "chiclet" button-less keyboard. Consumers would rather pay a low price for an older computer or one that could be upgraded, rather than one intentionally reduced. Even though this is effectively the same price and capacity as the reduced computer.
US health insurance is in the same boat. No one wants a "restricted plan" even though all but the wealthiest really buy such these days.
MIT recently announced that they are launching a new program to develop a $100 laptop--a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. http://laptop.media.mit.edu/
Although these are very low end systems according to the specification "500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel.", still I feel they can be of great help in education in third world countries.
No, it failed because people want REAL computers, and REAL computers are CHEAP.
No, it failed because poor people don't have any money to spend. [Which is what certain hoity-toity types would call a "tautology".]
You can't squeeze water out of a rock.
The entire classification of "Caucasian" has no basis in reality. The name comes from some goofy biblical scholar who posited that today's white folks are descended from Noah and his family who landed the ark in the Caucasus mountains. No kidding. No one actually uses the term.
Every time they figure out how to grow cash, the government changes the bills . . . besides, the Secret Service gets cranky about it, too . . .
hawk
Seriously. When are the PDA / Phone makers going to wake up and realize that they can make tremendous, super-duper, huge-purchase-incentive improvements in their products by integrating one cheap feature into their devices? The feature is true GPS.
(By "true" I mean that what cell phone companies in the USA call "GPS", location information based on cell tower triangulation, is NOT "true GPS".)
The cost of accurate GPS receiver chips is now only a few dollars per receiver. The new revenue streams available by including GPS as a standard feature would immediately cover the cost of engineering and infrastructure, then turn into a huge profit center.
GPS is one of those small things which enables tremendous change. Combine it with a cell phone connection that offers MobileIP (such as most carriers these days) and you open up even more potential.
It is amazing and utterly disappointing to me that none of the USA carriers currently build true GPS into their mass-market phones. I hold Congress partly to blame for requiring cell-tower-triangulation instead of true GPS. They should have required GPS instead, and I suspect that not doing so has put that feature many years off, even though the technology has been practical and cheap for several years.
Duh.
I've been saying just this for years. Dell has had a $199 model Axim for something like 3-4 years now, since before the Simputer was ever in production. And originally, the Simputer was even more costly. It maybe an X30 sans wifi now, but Dell has had $199 PPCs since the debut of the X5 Basic.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
There are some charities that recycle old computers overseas. In many ways these acts of charity are really just a low-cost disposal option. Sure there are some places that could use these, but many can't. You are not going to find a reliable power source in most 3world countires even in hospitals etc. The common man does not have power in his hut.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The UK Police do. Still need a timer for the 20 secs....
Sigs are for wimps