Netbooks In Africa

How about a netbook for $190 U.S.?

Today, Canonical and IBM announced a partnership with Simmtronics to offer the Simmtronics netbook, the Simmbook, to emerging markets at just that price.

Starting in South Africa, the Simmbook is preloaded with IBM Client for Smart Work, which includes IBM Lotus Symphony (productivity suite), access to IBM LotusLive cloud collaboration services, and the choice to add other IBM Lotus collaboration software like Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime.

This move helps bridge the gap between low price and high performance, providing a desirable form factor (the netbook) with an affordable software and OS footprint, one that provides a better computing option for those in small-medium businesses, non-profits, and even academia which might not otherwise be able to afford these types of collaboration resources.

“As Africa makes economic strides during a time when new technologies like cloud computing are emerging, the Simmbook netbook with LotusLive, Lotus Symphony, Lotus Notes and Ubuntu Linux provides businesses with a complete solution at an affordable price,” said Clifford Foster, IBM sub-Saharan CTO.

“CIO’s, IT directors and IT architects from all type of organizations in South Africa — even those that typically cannot afford new, expensive personal computers — can now legitimately consider netbooks instead of PCs for business use.”

Designed specifically for mobile computing, the Simmbook provides the power of a full-sized laptop in a compact body. IBM Client for Smart Work is IBM and Canonical’s complete desktop package that’s open, easy to use, and offers a security-rich alternative to costly, proprietary PC software, such as Microsoft Windows.  It  can help lower costs by up to 50 percent of a typical Microsoft PC.

Simmtronics is working closely with IBM to provide low cost computing in emerging markets around the world.   In addition to African countries, the low-cost Simmbook will also be available in India, Thailand and Vietnam.

The new Simmbook preloaded with IBM Client for Smart Work can be purchased online directly from Simmtronics using this order form http://www.simmtronics.com/order_form.php.  Simmtronics and IBM plan to continue to work with clients to offer the Simmbook at a competitive price to other countries around the world.

Go Daddy China

This has been an interesting week.

I’ve not been blogging much because I’ve been too busy playing work catchup after SXSW.

Hope you’ve been digging the podcast interviews Scott Laningham and I conducted as much as we did producing them.  We talked to some really interesting people here in Austin last week.

Of course, time rolls on, and everything changes, including in the interactive space.  I’ve been watching the Google/China situation with great fascination.

When I was in Beijing, it was before the Olympics and I stayed in the Beijing Hilton, and far as I could tell, I never had any issue with Internet filtering.

But boy have Google and China gone at it this week.  Last one out turn out the Great Firewall.

My own personal take is that while information wants to be free, China wants to keep it locked up, and Google can’t get a high-enough cost-per-click to make it worth their while.

So they reroute their mainland search queries to the “special administrative region” of Hong Kong, forcing the China government-owned mobile companies to rethink their mobile search deal, and in the end Microsoft’s Bing is the beneficiary.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

Even GoDaddy.Com has told the Chinese to take a domain-sales hike, which is really disappointing, for I was looking forward to someday seeing Danica Patrick scream around the corner Chairman Mao’s visage overlooking Tiananmen Square NASCAR style.

Of course, they may, in fact, be fighting the last Internet war — smartphone traffic has taken off like a rocket, up 193% year-over-year, according to AdMob.

The iPhone leads the way in terms of share, at 50% (up from 33% last year), followed by Android (up from 2% to 24%), and Nokia losing share (from 43% down to 18%…ouch!).

This just in time for Microsoft and FourSquare to start cozying up, with Bing now offering up a Foursquare map application that allows Bing map users to see check-ins on FourSquare.

Hey, maybe the Chinese Communist Party can use Bing maps to see Foursquare check-ins of Google sales reps running around Beijing trying to avert the wrath of the Golden Shield?!