Taiwan ADOC 2.0 & India’s £7 laptop project – What’s Taiwan National ICT Strategy?
by Joy Tang, Feb 10, 2009
I am doing a research on India’s £7 laptop project and urge Taiwan ICT industry to come up with national plan for future survival: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article5639463.ece
As a non-insider of India’s £7 laptop project, I speak from an observer’s view based on my ICT4D experiences from 1994. The message that I got out of it is that India is now having its capacity to do end-to-end ICT design/manufacture/distribution/services within its own national domain. With their first-hand experiences of what ‘developing countries’ need, they would be the most ideal hub around the globe to be the next ICT supply powerhouse. In 2006, Cisco established its 1st Cisco Globalization Center in Bangalore, India with a transformed focus on innovative services and software development.
As for whether the products are for real or not, I think we must learn from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) story: If ‘the biggest result of the $100 laptop project was the phenomenon of the netbook,’ I would argue that India’s £7 laptop project would result not just the tangible laptops that may cause a bit more than £7, but the whole ICT supply & chain management system and powers that are rising from India to Africa.
For now, some rising ICT players such as Brazil, Ghana, South Africa must consider what each country could offer to the new ICT market / scene based on its own capacity to steer the winning course in the new economy.
What is Taiwan’s national ICT strategy based on its experiences from the past 2 decades as Leader of the OEM? It is an urgent subject as a successful execution of a deeply-thought out plan would help contribute into healthy economic transformation.
