Tech Firms Woo Next Billion Users

Rob Katz — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 08:18:35 -0500

November 3, 2006 - 08:00, Wall Street Journal

Story Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116250181280811787-email.html

Teaser:
Intel hopes to work with local companies and governments to replicate the setup in hundreds of other villages in China, and is helping deliver computers and Internet access to rural health clinics and schools. It is also rolling out similar initiatives in India. Dressed in a red turban and shawl, Mr. Barrett inaugurated a high-speed wireless network in the rural town of Baramati on Thursday. The g

Big technology companies, their established markets maturing, increasingly see their future in a huge but seemingly unlikely pool of potential customers: poor, rural residents of the world's developing countries.

That is what brought Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel Corp., to Shijingwei, a farming hamlet in southern China's Guangdong province, this week. On a warm autumn day, Mr. Barrett sat in a dusty, one-story cement building for a demonstration of the community's first Internet-connected personal computer -- donated by the U.S. semiconductor giant in August. A village official, Huang Yongqing, showed how residents can use the computer to check previously hard-to-find market prices for sugar cane and fruit and adjust their crop mixes accordingly to maximize their profits.

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Tech Firms Woo Next Billion Users