India's "poor-friendly" Simputer set for May launch

Anshuman Daga

BANGALORE: A low-cost handheld computer developed by seven Indian engineers

to take the Internet to rural masses will start rolling out in May, the head of

a firm pioneering the project said.

The "Simputer", short for Simple, Inexpensive, Multilingual, is

championed by its followers as a friend of the poor, but some of its supporters

add that its features match cool and trendy handhelds like those built by Palm

Inc.

Originally expected to cost $200, it would now cost $50 more, Vinay

Deshpande, chief executive of Bangalore-based Encore Software Ltd., told Reuters

on Wednesday. The color screen version is priced at $300.

"We hope to produce 50,000 Simputers in the first 12 months and take it

to 300,000-500,000 in two years," Deshpande said.

Built by the non-profit Simputer Trust, the device is slightly larger than a

regular handheld PC, and uses the free-to-use Linux operating system.

Its software is expected to aid farmers seeking to know commodity prices and

beat middlemen and also provide speech recognition in regional languages to help

illiterate rural folk.

At $250, the Simputer will be three times cheaper than a PC, and cost about

the same as a color TV set, a price level which is expected to help spread

computers to the corners of India, two-thirds of whose one billion people live

in rural areas.

India's current installed base of computers is around six million. "We

have orders for 1,000 Simputers from firms in healthcare and co-operative

banking including few state governments," said Deshpande, whose firm is one

of the two key license holders of the Simputer.

Deshpande and two of Encore's other co-founders are part of the Simputer

Trust, which developed the device with a group of computer scientists from

Bangalore's prestigious Indian Institute of Science.

The Simputer hooks up to the Internet and accommodates individual smart cards

which store personal data to allow it be shared by many users. The software also

translates English and regional language text into speech.

Encore is initially targeting the institutional and corporate market instead

of tapping retail users which requires large marketing investments, Deshpande

said. "We are currently working to make enhancements like giving it an

international style, greater memory and stronger battery power," he said.

The device was first unveiled last April.

Encore has given contracts to two Bangalore-based companies to manufacture

the Simputer and formed a joint venture with a Singapore-based company to market

the device in Asia.