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| Langfang, China: Yao Zhenghai, who cultivates corn and fruit trees, tries out the LenovoÕs new $199 computer. The company
hopes to bring the internet to tens of millions of Chinese peasant households Peter Ford |
A PC for peasant farmers? China targets digital divide.
China's computermakers tap vast rural market with simple tools and local officials' support.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the September 28, 2007 edition
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Langfang, China - Visitors to the annual agricultural fair here this week were treated to something more than the corn harvesters and feedstuff pulverizers that usually grace such events.
They got to gawk at an item that its makers hope will become the Chinese peasant's next must-have piece of agricultural machinery: a $199 computer.
Lenovo, the world's third-largest computermaker and China's best-known global brand, chose this northeastern town to launch its assault on the growth frontier for PC sales – villagers in developing countries – and start bridging the digital divide between urban and rural citizens.
To tempt farmers into high-tech territory, Lenovo executives explain, they have tried to make their machine easy to use, cheap, and robust. But its key feature, they say, is its software, dubbed "Road to Riches," that helps peasants search for agricultural information that will boost business.
Wang Shunxiang, a fungus grower and the first customer to buy the computer, thinks he can see the potential.
. "If this helps me know more about market prices and find more dealers to sell to … it won't take me more than a few days to make back the money I am spending," he predicts.
Lenovo's President for Greater China, Chen Shaopeng, sees profit in the "Tianfu" (Heavenly Prosperity) model too, as he eyes 250 million households in the Chinese hinterland. "The rural market in China is huge," he points out, "and computer penetration is practically zero. This is a totally new market to be explored."
That novelty brings challenges: Electricity supplies are not always reliable in the Chinese countryside, phone lines reach only 47 per cent of rural homes according to government statistics, and even $199 is beyond the means of millions of peasants.
Lenovo's new product will also be competing with another low priced PC just launched by another Chinese producer, Haier. "These are very much early days," cautions Wang Jiping, an analyst with the US research company IDC. "They are still at the investment and ground-laying stage."
Still, the trend is there. While only 0.3 per cent of China's 162 million Internet users live in the countryside, their numbers are doubling every six months, according to the officialChina Internet Network Information Center.
Lenovo's ambitions to tap this trend take the shape of a chocolate-box-sized computer that plugs into a TV screen, controlled by a touchpad keyboard and buttons laid out like a remote control.
Using the machine is more like watching television – a familiar experience for most Chinese peasants – than sitting in front of a computer.
Simple controls take the user around a range of functions from online education and entertainment services to agricultural information portals, and also allows him to choose specific sites or send e-mails and instant messages.
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