Tech companies are scrambling to come up with PCs that are affordable to the world’s poorest. In a saturated market where those that can afford PCs already have ones - and companies like Intel boast 60% profit margins - the race is on to reach those in China, India, Latin America, and Russia.

The stats show a huge market. More than two thirds of the world’s population doesn’t own a computer. Only 15% of the world’s population now has internet access. And technology prices have dropped significantly. “Forty-one years ago, a transistor cost $5 to manufacture,” [ntel CEO Paul Otellini] said. “Today, that cost is one-millionth of $1. It’s now cheaper to produce a transistor than to grow a single grain of rice.”

There are a number of options. First, there’s the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative by former MIT Media Lab researcher, Nicholas Negroponte. His computers operate with a crank on the side. Cranking the computer for 1 minute yields 10 minutes of computer usage. And the cost per computer is cheap - $100 each.

Microsoft has their own initiative in the works. They’ve been running a pay-per-use trial in Brazil. People can buy a PC running Windows XP with a 17 inch monitor for between $250 and $350 with 10 hours of use. When the time expires, the user purchases more usage time - about 75 cents per hour - until he reaches the actual cost of the machine (about $600).

AMD has been working on its Personal Internet Communicator, which sells for less than $200 without a monitor while Intel has 3 new models available for developing markets for between $300 and $600.

As Mark Beckford, general manager of Intel’s emerging markets platforms group, puts it, Intel just needs to take in $30 per system sold and they’ll be raking in billions of dollars if they can capitalize on these new markets.

Source: InformationWeek.com