Microsoft aims to reach next billion PC users

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is using a speech in Beijing to unveil a new low-cost bundle of Office and Windows, one of several new initiatives aimed at getting PCs into the hands of more people in emerging markets.

The software maker will offer the $3 Student Innovation Suite to governments that agree to directly purchase PCs for students to use in their schoolwork and at home. Gates plans to announce the program at a company-sponsored forum for government leaders.

The collection of software, which will start shipping in the second half of this year, includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live Mail Desktop and several educational products. The $3 price includes the software license, while backup discs and documentation will cost extra. In order to be eligible, governments must pick up at least half the tab for the PC, though the software can also be used on refurbished computers, which can cost as little as $50, Microsoft said.

Microsoft is hoping this program and others will help the company reach more of the 5 billion people who have yet to benefit from the PC revolution.

"We've set an internal goal that by 2015 we will help to reach the first billion of the next 5 billion that have been underserved," said Will Poole, the corporate vice president who heads Microsoft's market expansion group.

Poole said that in the developed world Microsoft has largely reached its goal of a PC on every desktop and in every home. "The PC is an expected appliance in the home for access to information, for schoolwork," Poole said. But, he said, that still leaves five out of every six people on the planet without a PC.

Although many poor governments may not be able to afford to buy computers for their student populations, Poole said there are nations that have expressed interest in doing just that. Mexico, for example, has a program that puts computers in the hands of top students.

"This is a new trend we are trying to embrace," Poole said. "We expect there will be some number of many tens if not single hundreds of thousands of PCs purchased under programs like this over the next 12 months."

Although Microsoft is aiming the PCs at students, it understands that they may get used more broadly by the families who get them.

"We're not going to tell them that the father cannot use it to look for job listings or the mom can't use it to look up health information," Poole said. "Of course it is going to be used however it is that it is used in the household, but the expectation is that it is for the student for education as the primary use."

In addition to the discounted Office and Windows bundle, Microsoft is announcing several other projects. The company will nearly double, to 200, the number of local innovation centers it has over the next two years. Microsoft will also set up an employability portal aimed at helping more of India's technology workers find jobs. The software maker is working with the Asian Development Bank to help build additional technology capacity there.

The efforts mark an expansion of Microsoft's long-running Unlimited Potential program, an effort to bring computer literacy and job skills training to the world's underserved communities.

Poole said that Microsoft can't solve the problem by itself and is hoping to work with other tech companies, governments and international agencies.

"This is not something we are looking to do alone," he said.

[scotty321]

WHY?!

Why in the world would Bill Gates want to poison the rest of the
world with his insecure, confusing, unintuitive, horrible, crash-
prone, virus-laden, completely unusable operating system?? So the
rest of the world can feel computer illiterate & frustrated just like
90% of Americans already do? Someone should be stopping this
man from spreading his filth any further than he already has. We
need to put Macs in the hands of the rest of the world and show
them what a REAL COMPUTER is supposed to be like.

[Commander_Spock]

Does...

... this offer of computer software products (which "includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live Mail Desktop and several educational products) from the Microsoft Corporation to the underserved communities in the emerging markets around the world signals the demise of the "LINUX" Operating System. Anyone remembers a company once called "Netscape"!

[technewsjunkie]

Would this be legal in the USA?

I doubt it.

[Maccess]

Refurbished computers shouldn't need licenses

Refurbished computers already shipped with an OS whose license earned money for microsoft.

Sure, it may be Windows 98, 98SE, Me, or 2000, but if the user is perfectly happy with the original OS there shouldn't be a need to pay another amount (whether its $1 or $3) unless he wants to run Windows XP starter edition.

Why not sell the full fledged version of Windows for $10? and why bundle MS Office with it? It certainly is a good deal to have MS Office with the bundle, but so much of the developing world has already moved to OpenOffice.org.

[Ian Kirkland]

Isn't this

exactly how drug dealers get kids hooked on their wares?

[Sniche]

3rd Rate Software for the Masses

This so called handout of an OS that is ready for the scrapheap
After 2008 M$ will not support it, makes you feel really sorry for
the recipient

[rcrusoe]

Oh Great

1,000,000,000 more zombies spewing out spam.

[nedlohs]

Legality?

Isn't this called "dumping"? I assume the cost to make all that softare is more than $3 and if a foreign company did this in the US, it would be illegal (in my opinion, as a non-lawyer!).

[mariomiy]

People who have never been poor can't feel...

what an exhilarating project the OLPC. I imagine that the majority of participants in the IT forums have never had contact with poverty in childhood or been poor themselves, so they can't understand that, for a poor child, who survives hunger, thirst and infant sickness, the only important bridge to a civilized life is the wisdom acquired from elders, and educational tools.
I do, because my childhood was very poor, but my parents were hard-working and made sure that I had an education. As soon as I learned to read, I read as many books and magazines as I could, always curious to learn more. When I had access to computers, it was fun, too. I learned fast because new knowledge comes easy when one has a good background. I believe that learning is the main goal in life, and goes hand in hand with helping other people to achieve happiness. All other things, material comfort, power in society, are ancillary circumstances, that usually improves as one achieves one's main goal.
For all these reasons, I believe Negroponte is a wise man, who understands the basic needs of every person, and his project will be a revolution. No effort by Bill Gates et al will have such a deep repercussion as the OLPC, simply because Bill Gates only understands business but nothing of poverty and the fundamental necessities of a human being. Bill is just a spoiled brat, and all those who admire him are at least naïve, and need an internship in poverty.
To save his company from great depreciation in the next two quarters, Bill must tell Ballmer to lower the price of Windows Vista drastically, right away. Or else...