Microsoft Cell Phone PC

Friday, July 28, 2006

Yesterday Microsoft revealed a prototype of a Cell Phone PC that is being developed as a low cost home PC solution for emerging markets in poorer nations. The idea is that one day a Cell Phone PC could be sold in poorer nations that would be connected to a TV and keyboard to create a regular working PC at a low cost.

Microsoft has identified that many families in emerging market own a TV and a cell phone so by combining the power of a PC into a cell phone that can then be hooked up with a PC makes this one possibility of a low cost solution for PCs in poorer nations. This is easier to achieve than building a full self contained low cost PC.

The Foneplus cell phone PC would allow word processing, multimedia playback and web browsing. It would use scaled down versions of Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word and Windows Media Player.

Microsoft has not yet committed to building the product and it is just at the prototype stage. They have said they will look into what it would take to bring a cell phone PC to market before committing to development.