Huge potential human value will awaken when new people experience computing and connectivity

Huge potential human value will awaken when new people experience computing and connectivity

The year 2010 so far has been pretty eventful in terms of seeing where the future of consumer technology will lie. On the international level, a slew of conferences and trade shows have witnessed the unveiling of brand new, recession-defyingly expensive gadgets for well-heeled geeks to enjoy. While hardware will be dominated by 3D this year, the online space is all about social networking and instant updates. Google Buzz will take on Facebook and Twitter, while Apple’s iPad will be a strong contender in the portable gadget space, and they’ve been grabbing headlines (good and bad) though it’s still very early days for both.

In India, a lot of action is focusing on the long tail, or the lakhs of lower-income buyers. The charge of the cheap cellphone brigade is already ushering in a massive shift. It began as no-name Chinese cellphones and has since evolved to a number of brands selling similar devices, but with the assurance of sales support and a warranty. Even well-known consumer durable brands such as Videocon and Onida have jumped into the fray. The prices are low and features are quite rich. These products will go a long way in providing some sort of Internet connectivity to a wide new audience. If not, SMS and IVR-based services will fill the gap. While the big brands continue to roll out feature-rich phones, the days when people boasted about four-digit Nokia model numbers seem long past. We are also in the middle of a netbook/nettop avalanche, with new model being launched practically every day. While companies abroad struggle to convince people that they need newer and more powerful machines for high-definition video and jazzy graphical effects, the demand for basic connectivity and productivity here is loud and clear.

The Indian target audience isn’t made of uneducated, unexposed, unsophisticated village-people caricatures. Millions in cities and towns alike are simply held back by the high initial cost of a computer, and the recurring costs that go into upgrades and maintenance.  Erratic power supply, lack of availability, dust, heat and other factors also play their part in making things difficult. And while computer literacy and e-governance schemes pop up in news reports from time to time, things don’t ever seem to move forward fast enough. The biggest companies in the world are all trying to jump in—our cynical sides say it’s because they’ve saturated other markets, but our optimistic sides want to believe it’s because of the potential human value that we all know will awaken when huge new sections of the population are able to tap into the opportunities that computing and connectivity provide.