Handheld Computer Yet to Reach the Masses
S. Srinivasan,
IWon News,
Apr 06, 2005
The low-cost Simputer developed for use in India is being regarded as a failure - "Picopeta has sold fewer than 2,000 units in the past 12 months, far below the target of 50,000. Worse, only 10 percent of those Simputers were bought for rural use. Encore software, the other company making Simputers, also sold about 2,000 units." The major reason for the slow sales seems to be the dramatic drop in price of traditional computers. "Sales of desktops and laptops are booming in India, with 4 million sold during the 2004-2005 fiscal year and demand expected to grow 35 percent annually." One wonders, then, about the future of the much-touted MIT project to create a $100 computer for the same sort of market.
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