That Elusive $100 PC
- From: "Frederick Noronha \(FN\)" <Use-Author-Address-Header@[127.1]>
- Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 21:00:43 +0530
>>From "udit chaudhuri" <uditc at hotmail.com>
Here is my article on the $100 PC. The thoughts behind this were shared
with this list, while the final form was published in the Economic &
Political Weekly of April 9, 2005
EPW Commentary
April 9, 2005
That Elusive $100 PC
>>From the days of the government's Janata PC to the promised $100 PC, our
products continue to lose space to other better products. These
innovations generally develop an entire system of technology that gets
outmoded before their birth. Instead, would it not be a better idea to
make cheap microprocessor and assembly language trainer-developer kits
and market them to various organisations?
Udit Chaudhuri
>>From the days of the government’s Janata personal computer (PC) in the
1980s to the Simputer and Lindows programs of this day, as also the
ever-promised ‘$100 PC’, ‘wallet PC’, ‘poor-man’s PC’ and more – we see
our products losing space to other better products like the personal
digital assistant (PDA), palm top and portable internet devices like SIP
phones or cell phone cum organisers. These indigenous developments have
been flagged off with great fanfare but have veritably slipped into
oblivion.
Condemned to repeat history, it seems the archetypal techie aims to
switch off too many problems with one magic circuit design! Each of
these noble endeavours first develops an entire system based on a
technology derived through many cycles of observing trends in the
developed markets and dovetailing functional needs with progressively
advanced features, adapting the latest applied and basic research en
route. They then seem to homogenise some kind of minimal version of
those functions for first-time-computer-user markets, to produce a
micro-wonder that gets outmoded before its birth.
Instead, would it not be a better idea to make cheap microprocessor and
assembly language trainer-developer kits and overcome barriers in
marketing these to institutions, community bodies, ICT organisations,
etc? The 8085, it seems, survives only for this. This CPU chip has
outlived its advanced descendants and shifted gears from a once-ruling
PC nerve-centre to running embedded controls, yet it offers a simple and
cheap learning curve to this day. Plenty of supporting chip-sets, cards
as well as study materials are available. As the developer using the
8085 gains experience and confidence, it gives way to a vast range of
modern chipsets as per its application.
Need for Open System
Instead of a closed system of ace developers with mega budgets
(initially, at least) working in exclusive R and D facilities, against
time and competition in fierce secrecy and doling out tempting interim
versions that generate, needless hopes, is it not time for a more
integrated, across-the-board open system? In most cases, developers in
the super-developed world may not even realise how many diverse sectors
of industry are at work – devices, materials, machining and tooling,
packaging, logistics, operating software, applications software,
peripherals, systems integration, commissioning and maintenance support.
Local beneficiaries can develop and standardise their own systems with a
little help from local institutes. Given sound grounding, they would be
able to discover or conceptualise afresh, specify and order appropriate
components and materials too. Such locally nurtured developers could
upgrade these products and develop the ancillary support sector more
effectively and in tune with local needs. And we have lessons from our
own history to suggest that this is viable.
B and W television technology was passed on to small-scale industries in
India during the 1970s via the Central Electronic Engineering Research
Institute (CEERI) by readapting a circuit and standardising local
sources of components, materials, testing, assembly and quality control
procedures. This got the local industry going and later the need for
CEERI involvement was obviated on this front. Other consumer electronics
also entered the Indian market similarly, with the ETTDC and DoE
facilitating ‘canalised’ imports of components and kits and pushing
local manufacture, with stipulated indigenous content for each piece
that was licensed to be manufactured. Further, phased broad-banding of
licences introduced other products like calculators, electronic weighing
machines, cassette-players, compact music systems and eventually the
colour TV and VCR.
As a result, we saw a flourishing consumer electronics industry until
the late 1980s with declining import content. Exports also began to take
off despite export promotion zones not being as streamlined and helpful
in their systems as today. However, this industry was soon fettered by
licences placing caps on production capacities, quotas for essential
imports and the government’s attempt to promote the public sector as
sole supplier of critical semiconductor devices and components. The very
policies that had first nurtured the local industry became fetters with
the public administration lagging behind the pace of production and
demand growth. Then, with the growth of the colour TV, big players
eyeing India and the burgeoning of satellite-relayed broadcasting
networks, a possibly pressured ‘liberalisation’ killed all this with
free imports of ‘screwdriver technology’ or knocked-down products across
the board and a continuing ban on component imports.
Yet, even though nearly all brands and kings of the 1970s are dead and
replaced by global brands, we are never short of help in getting our
TVs, VCRs and other entertainment products serviced as needed.
Authorised service centres are, at best, franchisees or indirect
associates of overseas manufacturers. This also keeps our e-waste levels
lower than some other developing countries. Such is the gain of an open
system instead of one controlled by a ‘big daddy’ desperate to protect
his brand, having gambled millions on presumed requirements and
speculative solutions.
To a large extent, since the 1980s, our telecom industry emulated this
with indigenous development of the EAPBX, RAX and MEX by the Centre for
Development of Telematics (C-DoT) as well as selected joint and public
sector units to speed up all-India telephone access. This eventually led
to opening up the industry to both corporate and small-scale private
sector players, paving the way for later entrants like the global
cellular and internet service providers.
India abounds in the ingenuity of re-conditioning and servicing entire
machines including electronic plain-paper copiers and electric
typewriters, wherein local machinists and moulders have been tapped by
ingenious local repairers, into re-fabricating parts and sub-assemblies
of imported machines, whose manufacturers have shut shop, or phased out
production.
Even if this practice is questioned by big manufacturers and their
networks, it has saved large amounts of capital invested in the many
thousands of photocopy and typing shops all over India. It has also
saved the reputation of the big names that hid behind fine print, no
doubt legal, to leave thousands of customers in the lurch for service
and spares.
Coming back to PCs in developing countries, we need to be compatible
with our customers’ systems if we are regularly interacting with them as
off-shore developers of software, graphics or carrying out a BPO task.
For that we need to be able to import the same equipment, software,
tools and technology bases that our clients in the US or Europe need.
And dispose them if needed to keep pace, writing off the loss against
value added and opportunity cost.
Typically, the smallest BPO start-up offers a market for 1,000 branded
PCs from the EU/US. Likewise the smallest software house start-up means
a market for 100 branded PCs, and servers with development suites; a
small start-up content house means 50 multimedia workstations – plus
data storage and networking solutions. But all our daily computing tasks
do not need the same kind of advanced Windows or Linux environments,
neither the high-end application software nor hardware. Intermediate and
appropriate solutions can be developed for the local market too, but
with wider local participation.
Globally, standards are set by consensus across all manufacturers,
users, stakeholders and actors in any given sector. Why then must half a
dozen people sitting in Cambridge, Palo Alto, MIT or IISc conceive of
the electronic solutions for a developing world they never see, and who
still believe they are getting it right? If the standardisation process
affects beneficiaries and the population of potential users is larger in
developing countries than parts of the west put together, these
potential users must also be part of the standardisation process. There
cannot be a shortcut and I wonder how many billion dollars will be
wasted again and again by this refusal to learn from history.
As the old adage goes, give him fish and he will be hungry in no more
than a few hours; teach him to fish and he is hungry no more.
Email: uditnc at gmail.com
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