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By David Rothman

So far, the Simputer handheld has been a dud in India–with just 4,000 sold, according to an Associated Press item in the Washington Post. This was to be the machine to bring high-tech to the rural masses.

The Simputer, better marketed, just might have some e-book potential. My own theories from afar? Perhaps people wanted a larger screen and more power, especially with desktop and laptop prices down. And maybe the linux Simputer lost out because they wanted to run donated Microsoft programs designed for Windows machines. The AP article mentions the success of more conventional hardware Also, maybe there was too much emphasis on technology and not enough on spreading it around and educating the poor about its benefits.

Beta testing: Enough and well enough done?

I’m also curious how closely the Simputers’ designers consulted the nonprofits and government agenices that were supposed to snap up the machines. That, in fact, might be the main reason by far for the failure–as opposed to problems accustoming the end users to the machine. But then could the troubles be one and the same?

Ideally, at least, the nonprofits and government agencies would have known the needs of the users. How much beta-testing was done with not just with the middlemen but also the actual people who were to use the machines? Maybe plenty. Maybe none. Maybe good beta-testing. Maybe bad. And if a major problem was the donated Microsoft software, might it be a little comparable to infant formula for the Third World–something tempting, but not necesarrily the most sustainable or healthiest approach in the long run? Perhaps the real problem was a failure to educate the nonprofits and government agencies, as opposed to the end users themselves. Whatever the facts, I’d love to know the full story.

Possible lesson for e-bookdom

For e-bookdom, however, if my hunches are on target, there may be a lesson. You can’t perfect products or concepts in isolation, and you try to allow for all kinds of wildcards (such as donated software, in the case of the Simputer). If the e-bookdom lived by this credo, perhaps we wouldn’t have such user-hostile DRM and the Tower of eBabel.

But enough speculation. Do any of our readers in Bangalore or elsewhere care to offer their thoughts on what’s gone wrong with the Simputer? And is there still any hope for the machine? I hope so.

 
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