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Bringing the Internet To the Whole World
Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Personal Internet Communicator sells for about $200 in the developing world.
(By Julia Ewan -- The Washington Post)
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An external drive can be purchased to play music from CDs, and over time the plan is for distributors to be able to install educational or other specialized software aimed at their customers.
The device's limitations are designed to keep its cost down and to ensure that the machine is easy for first-time users to grasp and operate.
The more limited operating system, and the inability to download software and games, make virus and worm attacks less likely. The simplicity of the sealed box reduces customer-support calls, one of the biggest costs borne by PC makers.
"This is not a device for a teenager" interested in gaming, Camacho said.
But he said that in addition to appealing to inexperienced adults, the PIC could be a popular low-cost solution for schools throughout the developing world. In addition to ease of use, the machines are proving rugged and operate with very little power, he said.
AMD officials decline to disclose how many of the machines have been sold since their debut late last year, saying only that the number is in the thousands. Giannotti said there are PICs running in orphanages in Africa as well as in homes in South America and India. And he said that focus groups in China are looking at the computer.
"It's an interesting test," said Martin Reynolds, an emerging technologies consultant for research provider Gartner Inc. who said it is too early to know whether the program will succeed.
Whereas he doubts the MIT program can profitably produce a laptop for $100 over time, Reynolds calls the PIC program "a real business model."
Ruiz, who first came to the United States to attend the University of Texas, said he was driven to develop the PIC in part by his upbringing in a developing country, but he acknowledges that profit is part of his motive.
He said he was inspired by a University of Michigan business professor, C.K. Prahalad, who argued in a book that profits can be made -- and poverty eradicated -- when corporations pay more attention to those who earn $5,000 to $10,000 per year.
"I felt like we really needed to look at low-cost computing, and we couldn't find anyone who had an interest, so we decided to do it ourselves," Ruiz said.
AMD is spending about $160 to make each machine, which is assembled in Mexico by Solectron Corp., using memory provided by Samsung. AMD sells the machines to Internet providers for $185.
