Saturday, January 19, 2008
Why is Intel building wireless Internet access deep in the Amazon?
Why is Intel building city-wide wireless Internet access in a Brazilian town two days drive from the end of the closest highway? Because it needed to be done to be believed.
"The demonstration projects are a rip-off of the Nike slogan, 'Just do it,'" says Barrett. "I've given presentations around the world about the latest broadband wireless technologies. People will say, 'That's very interesting,' and go away. But if you do a demonstration like Parintins in their backyard, people take notice. And they start to say, 'This is not theory. Look, it's real. You can touch it.'"
If you are interested in business outside of the United States, read the whole thing, and reflect on this bit:
Today, more than half of Intel's revenues come from the less-developed countries in Asia and the Americas, up from less than a fifth a decade ago. The company has moved most of its component assembly and testing to the developing world; its research is also increasingly taking place there. Half of the global middle class lives in the developing world today. Within 25 years, that figure will be 90%, according to the World Bank's latest forecast. That will more than double, to 1 billion, the number of potential buyers for products that today are considered luxuries, including not only cars and refrigerators but also computers.
"We're taking this tier by tier by tier," Barrett says. In other words, Intel is pursuing not the so-called bottom of the pyramid, or BOP--the billions of people who live on a few dollars a day or less--but the next billion, consumers who rank economically just below those it serves today. The World Ahead Program, which reports to Intel's sales and marketing team, has an average of $200 million a year in funding--equivalent to 10% of Intel's corporate advertising budget. Barrett notes, "If we just advertised, we'd probably just reach the users who already know us and already use our products."
Yet another evil and greedy corporation, accidentally helping the less fortunate along the way to obscene profits.
1 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Jan 20, 10:52:00 AM:
How else are we quetzals going to tell those idiot tree sitters their not welcome. TREE HUUGERS GO HOME
