This essentially isn't any different than how things used to work in the rural U.S. I grew up in northern Iowa where farming is the mainstay of almost everyone. In the 1950s and 1960s when telephones and televisions really started to take hold in the area families would go to their neighbors' house down the road to watch Walter Cronkite on the evening news talk about Sputnik or the impending war in Vietnam. My dad's family had a party phone line up until the late 1970s which they shared with about a half dozen other households in the area. This sharing of the infant technologies allowed for the framework to be drawn out for profitable ventures like rural telephone companies and other businesses that spurred economic growth in these remote (by U.S. standards) areas. When the personal computer made its widespread debut in the early 80s they were still too expensive for almost anyone to afford, including farmers in North Iowa so the community got together and footed the bill for them to be installed at the public library and in the school. This allowed people to have access to a technology they otherwise couldn't afford on their own. India is hoping to do the same thing in this case and I commend them for this effort. Just as the first PCs were initially too expensive for nearly anyone to own, the market created by schools, small businesses, and communities all over this nation allowed for the young computer and software companies to reach enough sales to lower prices and bring the PC into the home and the potential buyers had already seen the usefulness (or novelty) of these things at the library or at school and shelled out the cash to get one of their own. I don't know...I'm not an economics major but it looks like it could actually work. Rural India isn't the same as the rural U.S. so I could be wrong about this, but, in essence, it really seems like a noble effort to enrich the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
Very aptly said. That is the exact reason why companies are scrambling to open up business relations with China and India. The same thing happened here 20 years ago when computers were only for big business and well-off tinkerers. However, the big money existed in opening up the market to the middle class in the form of computers that were affordable and useable to the "common man". I can't say how the simputer's sales might be or if it truly will "help the common man" more than $250's worth of bread, but from an economic standpoint, their heads are in the right place.
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This essentially isn't any different than how things used to work in the rural U.S. I grew up in northern Iowa where farming is the mainstay of almost everyone. In the 1950s and 1960s when telephones and televisions really started to take hold in the area families would go to their neighbors' house down the road to watch Walter Cronkite on the evening news talk about Sputnik or the impending war in Vietnam.
My dad's family had a party phone line up until the late 1970s which they shared with about a half dozen other households in the area. This sharing of the infant technologies allowed for the framework to be drawn out for profitable ventures like rural telephone companies and other businesses that spurred economic growth in these remote (by U.S. standards) areas.
When the personal computer made its widespread debut in the early 80s they were still too expensive for almost anyone to afford, including farmers in North Iowa so the community got together and footed the bill for them to be installed at the public library and in the school. This allowed people to have access to a technology they otherwise couldn't afford on their own. India is hoping to do the same thing in this case and I commend them for this effort. Just as the first PCs were initially too expensive for nearly anyone to own, the market created by schools, small businesses, and communities all over this nation allowed for the young computer and software companies to reach enough sales to lower prices and bring the PC into the home and the potential buyers had already seen the usefulness (or novelty) of these things at the library or at school and shelled out the cash to get one of their own.
I don't know...I'm not an economics major but it looks like it could actually work. Rural India isn't the same as the rural U.S. so I could be wrong about this, but, in essence, it really seems like a noble effort to enrich the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
Very aptly said. That is the exact reason why companies are scrambling to open up business relations with China and India. The same thing happened here 20 years ago when computers were only for big business and well-off tinkerers. However, the big money existed in opening up the market to the middle class in the form of computers that were affordable and useable to the "common man". I can't say how the simputer's sales might be or if it truly will "help the common man" more than $250's worth of bread, but from an economic standpoint, their heads are in the right place.