CCI

The 3rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies
and Development (ICTD2009) will be held 17-19 April 2009 at Carnegie-Mellon's
state-of-the-art campus in Doha, Qatar (http://www.ictd2009.org ). This conference will act
as a focal point for new scholarship in the field of ICT and international development.
Confirmed speakers include a keynote by
William H. Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corporation.

We invite submission of papers for ICTD2009, the third of an ongoing series of conferences,
which follows successful events at Berkeley in May 2006 (http://sims.berkeley.edu/ictd2006),
and Bangalore in December
2007 (http://research.microsoft.com/workshops/ictd2007)

IMPORTANT DATES
June 15, 2008 Last date for informal feedback
September 22, 2008 Submissions due
January 15, 2009 Final decisions sent out to authors
February 20, 2009 Camera-ready papers due
April 17-19, 2009 Conference

China's computermakers tap vast rural market with simple tools and local officials' support.

By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 28, 2007 edition

Langfang, China - Visitors to the annual agricultural fair here this week were treated to something more than the corn harvesters and feedstuff pulverizers that usually grace such events.

They got to gawk at an item that its makers hope will become the Chinese peasant's next must-have piece of agricultural machinery: a $199 computer.

Lenovo Low-Cost PC

Lenovo, the world's third-largest computermaker and China's best-known global brand, chose this northeastern town to launch its assault on the growth frontier for PC sales – villagers in developing countries – and start bridging the digital divide between urban and rural citizens.

To tempt farmers into high-tech territory, Lenovo executives explain, they have tried to make their machine easy to use, cheap, and robust. But its key feature, they say, is its software, dubbed "Road to Riches," that helps peasants search for agricultural information that will boost business.

Wang Shunxiang, a fungus grower and the first customer to buy the computer, thinks he can see the potential.

. "If this helps me know more about market prices and find more dealers to sell to … it won't take me more than a few days to make back the money I am spending," he predicts.

Lenovo's President for Greater China, Chen Shaopeng, sees profit in the "Tianfu" (Heavenly Prosperity) model too, as he eyes 250 million households in the Chinese hinterland. "The rural market in China is huge," he points out, "and computer penetration is practically zero. This is a totally new market to be explored."

That novelty brings challenges: Electricity supplies are not always reliable in the Chinese countryside, phone lines reach only 47 per cent of rural homes according to government statistics, and even $199 is beyond the means of millions of peasants.

Lenovo's new product will also be competing with another low priced PC just launched by another Chinese producer, Haier. "These are very much early days," cautions Wang Jiping, an analyst with the US research company IDC. "They are still at the investment and ground-laying stage."

Still, the trend is there. While only 0.3 per cent of China's 162 million Internet users live in the countryside, their numbers are doubling every six months, according to the officialChina Internet Network Information Center.

Lenovo's ambitions to tap this trend take the shape of a chocolate-box-sized computer that plugs into a TV screen, controlled by a touchpad keyboard and buttons laid out like a remote control.

Using the machine is more like watching television – a familiar experience for most Chinese peasants – than sitting in front of a computer.

Simple controls take the user around a range of functions from online education and entertainment services to agricultural information portals, and also allows him to choose specific sites or send e-mails and instant messages.

Found

Follow this link to see more pictures of Super-Cheap PCs

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