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."

I suspect...

[Vioxx (831107)]

...that this submission is an advertisement in disguise.

Re:I suspect...

[bird603568 (808629)]

didn't P. T. Barnum says something along the lines "and publicity is good publicity"? THe good thing is that people KNOW that cheap computer are possible.

Tin Foil hats..

[ShaniaTwain (197446)]

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!!

Surprise

[bostonsoxfan (865285)]

I don't find this as a surprise at all. This was doomed to fail because they didn't really have the full backing of a major company. At least someone is trying to cover the technology gap but it will take more time with lower prices in the semi conductor industry.

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.

Re:Surprise

[Saeed al-Sahaf (665390)]

No, it failed because people want REAL computers, and REAL computers are CHEAP. Why fool around with a toy?

Re:Surprise

[DRWeasle (605307)]

Just because it is a mud hut does not mean they don't have electricity.

I have done allot of traveling to 3rd world countries and been to too many villages to count. But the one thing that always surprised me was the number of TV's. This is true for South America as well as African countries. Usually they were small black and white TV sets. But they were on every night.

Maybe not every hut had one but the families were always willing to share. They set them up on small tables out side and then everyone would gather around to watch.

The top 4 thing to watch are:

Soccer
Baseball
their version of the soap opera
American TV

People in those small villages are also very friendly.

Re:Surprise

[bcrowell (177657)]

The thing is, if there are frequent blackouts or brownouts, it doesn't hurt a TV the way it would hurt a computer.

Re:Surprise

[by Anonymous Coward]

They SHARE TV with the neighbours? Man someone must alert the MPAA since they are showing American Shows. Sharing is so wrong. The TV set must strictly be for the consumption of the ORIGINAL buyer. If we don't stop these sharing commies, where will the world end?

Better solution...

[argent (18001)]

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.

"Why would I want a computer for my Sims?"

[by Anonymous Coward]

"Why would I want a computer for my Sims," one man asked. "Two hundred dollars seems like a lot for imaginary people."

WTF

[Profane MuthaFucka (574406)]

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.

Dell India doesn't sell PDAs

[by Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Dell India doesn't sell PDAs

[Scrameustache (459504)]

So you can't get support if you import one. Plus I doubt they'll be localised appropriately.

What are you talking about? All they have to do is shout out for tech support, they're in rural india: There's BOUND to be a tech support call center within earshot!

Re:Dell India doesn't sell PDAs

[by Anonymous Coward]

the same PDA costs 1/3 more in the UK for instance.

That is because of the extra space needed to store all those errant u's.

Re:Dell India doesn't sell PDAs

[alienw (585907)]

If you think people are too stupid to use a non-localized version, think again. Not to mention that most people in India know English quite well.

Time to market

[QuantumG (50515)]

Blah. It kinda reminds me of when the US government decided that a mass produced gun would be a cool idea. They made a handgun that could fire one round and then be manually reloaded (but generally wasn't), added a "comic strip" of instructions and put it in a plastic bag to be dropped from aircraft in areas that were under seige. The price for each gun was so rediculously low that it was possible to make millions of them. There's probably still millions of them sitting in military warehouses.

Now that's the way to make manufactured "aid" systems. Doing the same with computers would be simple.

Re:Time to market

[maetenloch (181291)]

You're probably referring to the Liberator [pacbell.net], a single-shot .45 pistol, that the US manuafactured during WWII. Supposedly they cost less than $5 to make and were designed to be dropped behind Axis lines to allow resistance members to kill an enemy soldier and take his weapon. Today they are extremely rare and are worth up to a $1000.

Re:Time to market

[QuantumG (50515)]

Yes! That's the one.

Re:Time to market

[Surye (580125)]

If Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] is to be trusted, it's $2.10/unit.

Re:Time to market

[Chrontius (654879)]

The liberator pistols (and probably the Vietnam era Deer Guns too) have been melted down as scrap. The Deer Gun had to be reloaded by poking out the spent shell casing with a stick and then reloading by hand with one round of .45ACP. The Vietnam version, called the Deer Gun required its user to unscrew the barrel to reload its single shot of 9x19mm parabellum.

More [dodnetwork.com] info [www.nfa.ca] can [pacbell.net] be [securityarms.com] found [pacbell.net] right [soonresources.com] here. [tripod.com]

M.O.C. PARENT IS NOT A TROLL

[Lehk228 (705449)]

just because someone mentions guns doen't make it a troll, the WWII "liberator" pistol was real.

Re:Time to market

[QuantumG (50515)]

I read about it in the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Guns. The instructions were in "comic strip" format, without any words, so they could drop the guns anywhere and people who couldn't read or didn't speak english could work the gun.

Re:Time to market

[EnderWigginsXenocide (852478)]

The GP is referring to a .45ACP Caliber single shot pistol made out of stamped metal components. These were dropped in large numbers into nazi occupied europe. The idea being that the small pistol could be easily hidden, then used to kill a regular German soldier and facilitate the resistance fighter in taking a better weapon from the corpse of the German (or Italian) soldier. The weapon wasn't meant to be a combat weapon as to reload one had to partily disassemble the weapon and use a stick to poke the spent shell casing out of the firing chamber before loading a new round. I don't recall if this weapon even had sights or not.

Good try.

[jcr (53032)]

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

Re:Good try.

[jcr (53032)]

Indian villagers who blew their life's savings on something that is now basically a paperweight.

What, did the machines suddenly quit working because the company that built them folded?

-jcr

heh..

[Aeron65432 (805385)]

Is anyone actually surprised? Look how Windows XP Starter kit has been doing!

They sold it for the wrong price

[by Anonymous Coward]

THIS is [geeks.com] 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.

Re:They sold it for the wrong price

[SoupIsGoodFood_42 (521389)]

But that's still a PDA.

Firesale Prices vs. Real Prices

[billstewart (78916)]

It looks like a cool device for $25. But it's really a $100 device that didn't sell (so maybe it wasn't all that cool, or at least not enough cooler than a Palm to get market share.) That doesn't mean you can mass-produce it at a profit for $25 - it means that somebody's got pallet-loads of the things that they're selling off to get back some money for them, and when the pallets are empty, they're not building any more.

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.

Dell PC completely misses the point

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

First off, the Dell outlet isn't in India. Second, a PC uses a lot of power, is big and fragile. A Simputer is, OTOH small and uses only a little power.

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.

Re:Dell PC completely misses the point

[flyingsquid (813711)]

I completely agree. What people need is clean fresh water, better agricultural technology, basic education, birth control, health care, access to capital, roads, electricity... sure, computers are on my list, but only if you've already got all of those other things.

Now, what I'm gonna say here may not go over well with the Slashdot crowd. I think America has done really well with technology- semiconductors, cars, aircraft, the A/C motor, the lightbulb, the phonograph, the telephone, TV, the PC, etc. etc. For each of these, America either did it first or made the first practical version of the technology. And America has prospered in large part because of this Yankee Ingenuity. But I think that Americans have drawn the wrong lesson from this- they automatically assume that any problem is a technological problem first and foremost. Throw enough high technology at it, and it'll all be sorted out. Well, it's just not that simple, and this misconception creates major problems whether we're combating poverty, or Iraqi insurgents, or what have you.

Re:Dell PC completely misses the point

[frdmfghtr (603968)]

But I think that Americans have drawn the wrong lesson from this- they automatically assume that any problem is a technological problem first and foremost. Throw enough high technology at it, and it'll all be sorted out.

You mean like e-voting? (dons flak jacket)

Re:Dell PC completely misses the point

[YrWrstNtmr (564987)]

clean fresh water
Technology.

better agricultural technology
Technology.

health care
Technology.

roads
Technology.

electricity
Techhnology.

When you say that they need all of those things, you ARE saying they need more tech. Maybe not "a PC in every living room", but most assuredly with a higher level of tech that they have now. How do you design a better water purification system? Or irrigation for crops? How to control efficient distribution of vaccines? How to get that knowledge to the villiage doctor?

Be

Re:Dell PC completely misses the point

[Cerebus (10185)]

Actually, rural farm computing can have a significant impact [wri.org] as long as it comes with effective communications.

You don't know the third world

[mangu (126918)]

I have lived most of my life in Brazil and I have seen plenty of mud huts in my life. Sure, the poorest people do need running water, sanitation, basic education, etc. But giving them welfare doesn't solve their basic problem which is the inability to earn a decent living. In my 40+ years of life I have seen a huge gain in living conditions among the poorest people in Brazil, and cheap phones have benn a big factor in this in the last decade.

Up to the mid-1990s telecommunications were a state monopoly in B

For what it's worth,

[The Cydonian (603441)]

I had blogged [industelegraph.com] about Amida approximately a year back. The conclusion: serious marketing and pricing issues.

Reminds me of...

[Dan East (318230)]

the Jackito [jackito-pda.com] (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

Where do old computers go?

[bw5353 (775333)]

Does anyone know where the bulk of old computers go? There must be millions of computers that are discarded in the economically rich part of the world each year, because they are "out of date". Is there no program to sell them cheap to people in the third world?

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.

Open or Port The Software!

[billstewart (78916)]

The Simputer folks designed some really cool software for use with low-horsepower machines where people use a wide variety of languages and alphabets and village-appropriate applications. It was cool stuff, and apparently they were better at that than they were at hardware design. Sounds like it's a good time for them to recognize what they're good at and what they're not good at, and port the software to newer commercial PDA platforms and/or open it so other people can port it.

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.

Not sure they want to sell it to individuals

[shm (235766)]

They appear sell it only to verticals, such as the army:

http://www.cxotoday.com/cxo/jsp/article.jsp?articl e_id=2701&cat_id=908 [cxotoday.com]

too bad

[Punto (100573)]

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..

MIT working on $100 laptop

[bstadil (7110)]

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 [chron.com]

They've got it all wrong

[supersat (639745)]

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 [washington.edu]. 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 [washington.edu]. I highly encourage you to check these talks out.

*Rollseyes*

[iehnll (842250)]

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.

Yugo failure

[Trurl's Machine (651488)]

I think it's similar to the famous Yugo failure [wikipedia.org]. 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.

Re:it would have worked

[QuantumG (50515)]

or frogurt.

Not it

[Mr. Underbridge (666784)]

... I'd like to get my party back. Trampling on State rights is definitely not. If you are still voting Republican because of their "conservatism", I'd like to ask you how your lobotomy went.

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*.

Re:Not it

[Antique Geekmeister (740220)]

Yes, they do. Radio exists, even satellite TV's in the village centers of very poor communities, and many of them do try hard to get their children some education. Don't underestimate the ability of the poor to see, and understand and envy, the world of the wealthy and powerful.

Re:Mass production

[1u3hr (530656)]

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.

So what features were removed -- colour screen? -- it never had one. In any case, the idea was never about eye-candy but simple practical business and educational use, and low power consumption. You, and "prostoalex" are comparing two quite different devices. The article cited does not mention the cheap Dell handhelds he linked to, apparently Prostalex imagines Indians can buy from Dell online and get them delivered by FedEx for the same price he can. Dell India doesn't even sell handhelds [dell.com].

Re:The project was doomed from the beginning

[jhoger (519683)]

You minimize the advantage of using standard batteries as though it doesn't matter. That's a big part of the reason I still use a Palm IIIxe and my Tandy Model 102.