Friday's Wall Street Journal featured a front-section story, Tech Firms Woo Next Billion Users (subscription required), describing the aggressive BOP strategies of tech firms Intel and Microsoft. In it, we learn that Microsoft is rolling out 50,000 entrepreneur-run computer kiosks throughout India; Intel, meanwhile, has already trained 1.3 million Chinese and Indian teachers on classroom technology use. Teacher training and kiosk development aren’t profit centers – at least in the short term. But both firms have taken a strategic, long-term approach to market and product development. Microsoft India chairman Ravi Venkatesan is quoted in the article:

"This is a good way to do long, long-term business development...We are under no illusions that this is going to generate a quick payoff."

Another excerpt cements the long-term strategy:

Their aim is to reach what executives call "the next billion users" of consumer technologies like the Internet and cellular phones. The images of executives helping the poor can also help maintain good relations with the government, a critical part of doing business in both China and India...Getting technology to rural residents isn't easy. It requires navigating local bureaucracy, offering extremely inexpensive products and teaching people who may not have easy access to electricity the benefits of the chips, software and computers. And executives acknowledge that their efforts won't necessarily show up on the bottom line right away.

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As a site dedicated for the past year and a half to the "next billion" and the business strategies that can empower them as micro-consumers and micro-producers, its good to see the Wall Street Journal using that headline in a mainstream business story about tech firms and their strategies in low-income parts of developing countries. The story is even better than the Journal’s generally excellent reportage indicates. Microsoft, for example, is not just experimenting with low-priced versions of their software—it is rolling the product out in over 50 countries and already piloting "pay-as-you-go" business models to enable BOP consumers to buy computers. Intel is piloting its WiMax communications tools as well as low-cost PCs. And it’s not just the IT and communications tech industry, either—British Petroleum is now selling low cost cook stoves in India that can switch effortlessly between biofuels and propane, and building a propane delivery network as well.

Increasingly, smart large companies get it—their next billion customers will come from the BOP, whose needs require novel solutions, new business models, and often whole new business ecosystems. That in itself is a real change. Back in the fall of 2000, when we hosted a conference called Creating Digital Dividends to introduce the tech community to the potential of these new markets, there was a lot of enthusiasm but also a lot of skepticism—famously, Microsoft’s Bill Gates told the conference that "poor people don’t need computers." Fortunately, Mr. Gates rapidly changed his mind. But we knew at the time that it would take years (and more conferences) for companies to learn how to take on the challenge successfully. We're amazed and delighted with the accelerating pace, and with the growing press coverage of this business trend.

As you probably know, we've been following the recent flurry of news stories about remittances for development quite closely.  NextBillion staff writer and DTE deputy director Bill Kramer has written a series of blog posts outlining what he feels is being done well and what's been done poorly (notably, Lou Dobbs' spinning the story into a bizarre anti-immigrant angle).  I'm willing to bet that Bill's not the only one with strong opinions here – and evidently, the World Bank is willing to bet on that, too.  

The Bank has organized an online discussion that will kick off tomorrow morning on the topic of remittances and development.  Pablo Fajnzylber and J. Humberto López, senior economists from the World Bank’s Latin America and the Caribbean region and authors of Close to Home: The Development Impact of Remittances in Latin America, will be on hand to answer questions.  Log in starting at 10:00 am EST to see it unfold; for now, you can submit your questions in advance.

Thanks to Christine for the reminder.