SAO PAULO, Brazil--At a high-end computer store in Brazil, you'll find the same kinds of Dell, HP, and Sony models you'd see anywhere in the world.
But in the department stores where Brazil's middle class do their shopping, a homegrown brand, virtually unheard of outside of Latin America, dominates: Positivo.
Positivo has the lion's share of Brazil's retail market, accounting for nearly a third of retail sales and selling more than a million PCs last year. At one key retailer, Casas Bahia, Positivo's desktops are the only ones on the shelves. Overall, Positivo says it sells more computers at retail than the next three players combined.
In large part, the company's growth has paralleled that of the country's middle class.
"Positivo was at the right place at the right time," CEO Helio Rotenberg said in a telephone interview on Monday. "There are a lot of families that have the desire to buy their first computer and now they can."
Part of Positivo's success has been creating products that make sense in the local market. For example, it has a Media Center PC, dubbed PCTV, that combines the functions of a computer and TV.
Unlike U.S. models, which tend to be relatively high-end, Rotenberg said his company aimed for a low-cost machine that can serve dual purposes as a second TV and a first computer in moderate-income households.
"We tropicalized this concept," Rotenberg said.
One of the company's latest pushes is the "family PC" concept, which adds onto the computer a portal with everything from recipes to homework help to personal finance information.
Rotenberg notes that for customers in its target market, the PC is not a personal device, but rather one shared by the whole household. "Each part of the family, they are a part of the computer."
Click here to read all of the stories in The Borders of Computing series.
The cheapest of Positivo's desktops can be had for 50 reais ($30) a month, with financing from the store.
At that price, Rotenberg says it's possible to start reaching some in the next lowest economic segment, those whose monthly income is around $270 a month. Construction workers and those who clean houses are starting to buy computers, he said.
These are "not big numbers in this moment, but they are beginning to buy," he said.
Positivo is also trying to aim a bit higher on the pyramid. It now makes its own laptops, ranging from models that cost about $800 to models costing more than $2,000, including a stylish white model aimed at the upper segments of the market.
The bulk of the company's energy, though, remains on the growing middle class, Rotenberg said. "It's exactly where the growth is," he said. "It's exactly where we put our weapons."
Those weapons are growing. Positivo has started manufacturing its own motherboards and LCD screens, in addition to expanding its plant in Curitiba to up its capacity to 225,000 PCs a month.
"We are very happy with the market," Rotenberg said. "We think we are in a very good phase."
SAN DIEGO, Calif.--The citizens of Serrana, Brazil, are not waiting around for Intel or Nicholas Negroponte to deliver low-cost PCs to their school children. Instead, they're taking the matter into their own hands.
A Brazilian student tries the Serrana digital desk
(Credit: Victor Mammana)Starting at the end of this month, the Serrana Digital Desk project will get underway when 200 surface PCs that transform into desktop PCs will be placed in classrooms in the city of 45,000. It's a trial run of a new, very local program that is intended to give kids computers in the classroom while involving as many community members as possible in the implementation of the project. See a video of one of the desks here (Note: it's a Brazilian news feature in Portuguese).
CNET News.com sat down with Victor Mammana, who heads up the display branch of the Brazilian government's Ministry of Science and Technology, here at the U.S. Flat Panel Display conference.
Mammana's interest in the project is two-fold: he's a physicist by training and co-invented the low-cost tablet display that will be used in the Serrana digital desks, but he's also involved evaluating the impact and utility of low-cost PC programs for education for Brazil.
He's worked closely with Nicholas Negroponte, who heads up the One Laptop Per Child initiative, as well as Intel, which has its own version, the Classmate PC. Both Intel and OLPC are currently bidding for the contract to provide their low-cost laptops to Brazil's federal government.
The Serrana project is intentionally local to the core. It wasn't Mammana's idea; instead he was approached by the mayor of Serrana, Valerio Galante, a man who Mammana describes as "passionate" about education. The mid-size urban city that's 3 hours outside Sao Paolo wanted to institute a local solution to bringing technology to their 7,000 school kids by taking the school desks already in classroom and refurbishing them with tablet PCs built into them. The key is that the desks will be refurbished in Serrana, and the technology is Brazilian made.
Victor Mammana, head of the Information Display Division for Brazil's Ministry of Science and Technology
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)"The idea is not to make a business out of that, but more like a social franchise," said Mammana. "It's interesting, this idea of providing a local solution for a local problem."
When Galante approached Mammana, the mayor already had a site picked out to refurbish the desks. By employing local workers to do that, as well as maintain the new computers, the city of Serrana wants to demonstrate that education is not just taking place in the classroom, but also when young students see their older family members and community pitching in to find a local solution, said Mammana.
The tablet PCs, which feature 15-inch LCD with multi-point technology (not a touch screen, but the surface can pick up more than one stylus at a time), will cost less than $30 each to build, and incorporating them into the desks will cost roughly $550. Though that's significantly more than the idea of a $100 to $200 laptop, that's fine with them.
"The tabletop seems more expensive than a single (laptop) device, but by investing in the whole economy, it's OK if it's slightly more costly," Mammana said.
The tabletop PCs will have WiFi connectivity, Intel Celeron processors, small solid-state drives (no local hard drive) and will run a version of Linux. Each classroom will have its own server where all the data will be kept, and each teacher will have access to a content management system where they can input their lesson plans. Digital chalkboards at the front of the classrooms and will connect up with the desks.
The Serrana project is significantly different from the cutesy laptops being pitched to the federal government in other ways too. The biggest difference is that the digital desk isn't a mobile product, but Mammana, who's spent two and a half years exploring this segment of computing, says he's unconvinced portability is necessary in this case.
"I'm not sure how important mobility is for 8- to 12-year-old kids," he said. It's not as if they're checking e-mail on their way to the airport, he noted. Plus, keeping the PCs in the classroom allows for more structure in how they're used and cuts down on misuse of the government-funded devices, like illegal activity, pornography, or the devices being sold off piecemeal, or in whole, on the black or gray market.
They also like the surface idea because the bigger displays encourage more comfortable posture, and better legibility of the screens. But the digital desk shouldn't be considered a competitor to OLPC. Mammana is under no illusion that this scenario could work in just any city.
"There has to be the right conditions," Mammana said. "This wouldn't work in Sao Paolo." In other words, it's a more manageable issue to tackle in a city of 45,000 versus a metropolis of 17 million.
"I don't believe it's going to be viable for all cities. Brazil has 10,000 cities," he added. "If 50 can reproduce this social franchise, that's already a great achievement."
(Credit:
Engadget)
Why Philips would want to join the hyper-competitive notebook market is beyond us, and even more curious is why it would choose to do so in Brazil. But the Netherlands-based electronics maker will be doing both in December, Engadget says, with two new models.
The first has an 11-inch display, U2400 Core Duo processor, 1GB of memory, a 120GB hard drive, and a dual-layer DVD burner; the second a 13-inch screen, T7300 Core 2 Duo chip, 2GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, and a dual-layer burner. The finishes of their casings, respectively in magnesium alloy and piano black (shown here), may be their most distinguishing features--aside from their price. At $2,477 and $2,165, these machines don't appear to be aimed for the hoi polloi.
In fact, we're not sure which consumers Philips is targeting with these notebooks, especially because it says they were developed "specifically for the Brazilian market." Perhaps they include some sand-resistant features for the cabanas in Rio.
I woke up Monday to the announcement that starting September 24, the XO laptop (famous as the little laptop that could) will be made available to buyers in so-called first-world countries, in quantities less than 100,000 units. In fact, for less than $400 you can give one and receive another--an excellent solution to an age-old moral dilemma.
... Read more
(Credit:
I4U News)
Panasonic apparently has an equal-opportunity paintbrush when it comes to equipment. Following the trend of neon appliances in the home, from refrigerators to washing machines, the company is applying its pallette to the color-barren workplace.
Its new line of C3 multi-functional copy machines come in such non-traditional office hues bright red, yellow and blue. We applaud the effort because, as I4U News notes, research shows that colors are generally good for productivity and morale at work.
However, we must say that doesn't hold a candle to Konica Minolta's psychedelic copier-DVD-latte machine--either in function or in hallucinogenic design.
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