HP shows off products tailored for India
Sify.com
April 07, 2006
By Dan Goodin in Palo Alto (California)
Hewlett-Packard Co. on Thursday showed
off new products and research tailored to India, including
a writing tablet that makes it easier to enter characters
from two of India's national languages into a computer.
HP is also aiming the technologies at China
and Russia in an attempt to adapt its products to countries
with languages, economies and cultures that differ from
HP's strongholds in the United States and western Europe.
"If you're in the high technology
business, you need to look ahead. The ball keeps moving,"
Dick Lampman, HP's senior vice president of research, told
reporters.
He spoke at a demonstration at HP Labs
headquarters that featured technologies designed at HP Labs
India, which was established in 2002.
The square tablet, which HP dubbed the
Gesture Keyboard, allows a computer user to use a penlike
stylus to enter characters in Hindi and Kannada, two of
India's 14 national languages. The 6-inch-by-6-inch device
was introduced in India two weeks ago and costs about $50.
HP plans to offer updates so it will eventually serve speakers
of additional languages.
"This is the way we learn to write
as children," said Ajay Gupta, the director of HP Labs
India. "There's absolutely no new learning required."
Among the other research the company demonstrated:
- Software that prints charts, graphics and literature
that accompanies television broadcasts. The product,
which is still being tested, is aimed at serving schools
and community centres in countries where Internet access
still lags far behind the availability of TV broadcasts.
- A system that uses a barcode to electronically confirm
the authenticity of printed documents. HP hopes government
agencies will use it to deliver land records and other
official documents to cyber cafes in remote areas so
farmers don't have to travel to a central office.
- An electronic tablet that electronically stores information
entered into forms. It would allow census takers and
people doing market surveys to fill out forms with pen
and paper and then digitally transmit the contents to
a computer.
HP is hoping the products will help it increase revenue
by expanding into new markets. The Palo Alto-based company
got about 35 per cent of its 2005 revenue from the United
States, and less than 10 per cent of its sales from India.
US revenue grew less than 5 per cent between
2003 and 2005. It grew by more than 28 per cent in non-US
countries.
Click
here to read the article at the Sify Website
|
Printable version
back
top
