page director: 
Brian D. Butler
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see also: tech trends to watch , and bridging the digital divide
making technology affordable
One of the most interesting developments in the past 10 years is that technology is no longer developed first for corporations (who were the only ones that could afford it), and then later adapted to be marketed to consumers. Nowadays, most of the best innovations are marketed directly to consumers, and later, if its is first successful with consumers...then it is later marketed to corporations. This is what we see happing with social networking sites such as Facebook, as well as blogging, wikis, collaborative web tools, and so on. But, beyond the world of the internet we are also starting to see massive price drops, to the point where technology is starting to be developed not just for the rich world, but also for the less developed nations as well. The historical international product cycle is being inverted as products are being first developed to be marketed to Latin America and Asia. We see this happening with such companies as Quanta Computer, and Asustek who are marketing a flash based laptop that retails for under $200 and is geared to compete vs the OLPC project. There are many other examples of technology developments that are being marketed globally, and skipping the traditional product life cycle. If you have any insights you want to add, please feel free to add them here ...
Adapting products to consumers of lower incomes
The search for opportunities with consumers of low income, moreover, is common to many businesses. The operation of the Brazilian Basf, one of the largest chemical companies in the world, has also invested to adapt their technologies to the demands of the population in emerging countries. From mid-2008, the company will begin to sell the Neopor in the country, a kind of block of polystyrene for the construction. In Europe, the product is used to improve the thermal insulation of houses. In Brazil, will be offered to construction that are exploring the market for popular housing for the class C with another purpose: reducing the time of execution of works. In addition, its installation does not require technical knowledge, important feature lacking in a country where labour-qualified. "There is a clear guideline of the matrix to look into products more suited to the local reality," says Rolf-Dieter Acker, president of Basf for South America
see also: opportunities with consumers of low income
and bottom of the pyramid marketing
Clever ideas:
Wifi-equipped tuk-tuks tour the streets of Phnom Penh
Marketing & advertising / Telecom & mobile
Cambodian telecoms provider qb has fitted tuk-tuks with wifi routers,
providing free internet access to anyone nearby. The vehicles
also function as mobile showrooms for qb products and services.
auto Industry innovations
see: India car industry - the 2000 dollar car
Computers
We see this happening with such companies as Quanta Computer, and Asustek who are marketing a flash based laptop that retails for under $200 and is geared to compete vs the OLPC project. Another interesting Silicon Valley company to watch is NComputing, which aims to sell computers for as low as $70 to the worlds poor.
Agam Shah / New York Times:
Former OLPC C.T.O. Aims to Create $75 Laptop — A laptop under US$100 could reach desks if a new venture formed by former chief technology officer of One Laptop Per Child, Mary Lou Jepsen, can deliver on its promises. — A “spin-out” from OLPC, the company, Pixel Qi is looking to create …
example: Computers in Brazil
The evolution of the Brazilian economy in the last decade just causing a strange phenomenon - many of the restrictions of the stage business of the past reversed itself in opportunities. The most eloquent example of this is the Brazilian market for information technology - where a demand practically nonexistent led to a rise in market. Ten years ago, the dilemma was to grow its computer division. The company already sold to the government, but ordinary consumers used to the grey market, composed of machines assembled with components illegal and pirated software.
Today, with the retraction of informality and the increased consumption of computers (because of the dollar low, the ease of financing and the exemption of PIS and Cofins) - which disturbs the executives of the company is the large number of competitors in this market Brazil. In the search for differentiating your product, Positivo has studied the behavior of consumers, especially those in Class C, where place bets for growth.
"Two years ago started to go to house these people to understand that how they use the computer and what can we do to make our more attractive as those of competitors," says Oriovisto Guimaraes, president of the group Positivo. According to him, the first PCs based on these ethnographic research (which the company does not reveal details), will be manufactured in 2008.
The "free economy"
Many of the costs related to information technology - whether in storage, processing or telecommunications - are falling so dizzying and tend to zero. "The cost of storing or transmitting 1 kilobyte of data is so low that neither is more measured. Soon, the same will be true for 1 megabyte and, in the next moment, to 1 terabyte," he wrote in an article recently published in British magazine The Economist. This movement formidable increase of capacity to reduce costs - Express form in the Law of Moore, which states that every 18 months doubles the computing power of the microchip and prices fall by half - already have clear impact on some industries, such as music.
The television industry, for example, must become because of the emergence of services such as YouTube, which takes advantage of the decreasing costs of technological infrastructure to offer a virtually infinite collection of videos, with the convenience of watching only the desired, at the time most convenient. One way or another, Anderson argues, all businesses touched by the internet - and they are many - will be influenced by the economy's free
Many of the numerous free services offered on the Internet are paid with money from advertisers. This model of business, which traditionally is applied to the TV and the open radio, is expanding.
Air travel for $10 ??
The abundance of digital technology is also behind one of the most innovative business models for the last time, the low-cost airlines. Thanks to new and modern information systems, the more aggressive European airlines can charge less than 10 dollars per a passage within the continent. Clearly, a trip costing much more expensive than that, and the costs are covered through the sale of a number of other services, such as meals on flights, baggage handling and miscellaneous items related to travel, such as rental cars, hotels and daily . And, of course, these companies also have economic advantages to plan their routes always involving secondary airports, which offer rates of operation much lower than those of major centres. By redefining the business aviation around the air "almost free", rather than simply selling tickets, these companies have changed forever the industry - and won a lot of money with this. The most famous, the Irish RyanAir, made 3.2 billion dollars in fiscal year 2007, an increase of 32% compared with the previous period, and profits increased 42%, reaching 626 million dollars.
Mobile phone service
give "free" devices in exchange for service contracts. As the mobile operator adopt a business model similar to offer increasingly sophisticated devices for free in exchange for contracts of long duration and the guarantee of revenue with the services.
Free Music
In the music business, the equation is somewhat different: the money comes increasingly from live performances and less from the sale of discs. But the free distribution of tracks is essential to attract fans and consequently make good tours. In October, the rock band Radiohead won the English headlines by launching a drive over the internet. Supposedly tired of the "unfair exploitation" of the record labels, they decided to cut the intermediary and sell their music in one site. The fans could pay as wanted by the disk - or simply download it for free (subsequent research indicated that only 40% of fans made a contribution of 6 dollars on average). "Today, we got money mainly doing shows," said Thom Yorke, the leader of the band, in a recent interview. The business of the record, which has always relied on the sale of recordings and the distribution of physical products, may be facing the greatest crisis of its history. But for musicians, the donation of your creations and even the spread of their music through piracy have become an integral part of economic viability.
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