Tech's Next Billion Users
Business Week writes: "With affluent markets maturing, tech's next 1 billion customers will be Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Thai... In reaching them, the industry will be deeply transformed."
I have been writing on a similar theme in some of my Tech Talk columns:
- Reinventing Computing
- As India Develops
- The Next Billion
Economist Innovation Award Winners
The 2004 Winners are:
Bioscience: David Goeddel, chief executive of Tularik, for gene cloning and the expression of human proteins.
Communications: Vic Hayes, former chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 working group, for the development and standardisation of Wi-Fi wireless networks.
Computing: Linus Torvalds, Open Source Development Labs fellow, for the development of the Linux operating system.
Energy: Takeshi Uchiyamada, senior managing director, Toyota, for developing the Prius hybrid car.
No boundaries: Gerd Binnig, Heinrich Rohrer and Christoph Gerber, researchers at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory, for the development of the scanning-tunnelling microscope (STM).
Social and economic innovation: Muhammad Yunus, founder, Grameen Bank, for the development of microcredit.
Pitching to VCs
NW Venture Voice has some useful advice.
"Tech's future" in Business Week is a great story.Of particular interest to me,given my background in marketing of consumer technology products,is that a leading Chinese PC maker is to launch later this year a Home Learning PC which comes with four education applications and aphysical lock and key to prevent the kids to goof off when studying !
What's more interesting is that this has been arrived at by doing ethnographic research (courtesy Intel)followed by work at Intel's User Centred Design lab.
Wonder why no Indian PC manufacturer has made a strong attempt to research & create PC applications relevant for the Indian market and then used that as the pillar of its PC marketing ?
And the lesson is that the local context is important.
Posted by Rohit VarmaSince 1978, China has had a strong industrial policy driven by government ministries. For IT, investment, joint ventures and even standards and protocols have been driven by the Ministry of Information and Industry and Beijing.
In many cases, MII simply ordered companies to adopt a new standard or protocol, or establish a new company. This has been a major factor for the rapid growth of the mobile phone industry, for example. It has also played a very important role in the formation of JVs with non-Chinese IT companies, and obtaining new technology.
Failure to understand the importance of MII's role in Redmond, Washington has accounted for some of Microsoft's headaches in China. MII is able to order a software package to be installed or removed from China's ministries, which have more than 2M PCs installed.
The development of new IT products by the private sector in China is because of MII's early investment in the industry. Now, the private sector is strong enough to take off on its own, or leave the nest, so to say.
Posted by Paul Denlinger