Microsoft Seeks Alternatives to Low-cost Laptops

Microsoft is looking at alternatives to ultra-low-cost laptops in the drive to arm people in developingnations with a way to communicate and access the Internet, and the company is turning its sights oncheaper devices that can give people a start in computing, such as smartphones and sharedcomputing.

The world's largest software maker has a few projects in the making, including a push to use mobilephones in computing and microfinance. Mobile phones have already made an impact in nationsacross the developing world, from India to Zimbabwe, enabling people such as farmers andfishermen to find better markets and prices. Handsets also give a person a way to be reached forjobs.

"Technologies like the mobile phone promise to take things like very small loans, microfinance, andallow them to operate in a very efficient infrastructure so that the price and the availability offinancial products can be far broader, reaching out to everyone in society," said Bill Gates, chairmanof Microsoft, in a speech at the Jakarta Convention Center last week. "We haven't achieved that yet,but that's an area where Microsoft and my foundation are working on and investing very heavily."

Microfinance is important because people in developing nations don't often have access to loans,and when they do, they face interest rates as high as 20 percent to 30 percent a day to loan sharks.The microfinance trend was made famous by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

Identity and billing are benefits of tying mobile phones to finance products. A mobile phone providesan identity, and cellular network operators can be part of the microfinance process through theirbilling processes.

One of the reasons companies are looking more to mobile phones for developing nations is becauseof the huge number of handset users worldwide, estimated at 3 billion, and widespread networkcoverage. Nearly 90 percent of the global population is covered by a mobile phone network,according to information from the GSM Association and CDMA Development Group.

Handsets are so popular in developing nations that those countries are finding novel ways to use thetechnology. For example, in Indonesia, a nation of 230 million people spread across 17,000 islands,the government has started allowing certain services and bill payments over mobile phones. The

president of the country even set up a mobile phone number, 9949, so people can SMS (shortmessage service) to communicate directly with him.

"I was immediately buried in an avalanche of messages telling me what to do to solve the nation'sproblems and also scores of SMSes containing personal, including marital, problems. But my officehas been able to cope very well," said Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a speech.

Microsoft is looking at ways to hook smartphones up to TVs to use the computing power andconnectivity of the handset with the larger screen of the TV for a better, and cheaper, Internetexperience in the developing world. The company began working on Fone+ a few years ago, and hastested prototypes proving such devices can lower the cost of computing for the poor.

The company still says ultra-low-cost laptop PCs (ULCPCs) have an important role to play, but suchdevices are still expensive for developing nations, according to Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chiefresearch and strategy officer, and the head of its Unlimited Potential Group, which works onprojects for the poor.