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The Texas-based chip vendor AMD calls it the 50x15 initiative: the move towards providing Internet access to 50 percent of the world's population by year 2015, a project that envisages a five-fold growth in the next ten years.

In a major departure from its mainline business of designing, fabricating, and marketing a variety of silicon chips, AMD announced a consumer device called the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), a new form-factor of the personal computer.

The novelty of the offering is in the price-$185 without a monitor and $249 with a monitor, as per the company's pre-launch reports. Nonetheless, even in terms of Indian currency, the PIC would come cheaper than a color television and many other consumer durables.

AMD estimates that more than 200 million households around the world with sufficient incomes to support a PC have yet to purchase a system. These potential users might not even realize they can afford a computer until they are presented with a low-cost product like the PIC, the company said. The PIC is a small form factor desktop designed with simplicity and affordability in mind. The system runs on a version of Microsoft's Windows CE operating system, fitted with Windows XP extensions, allowing it to provide consumers with a graphical interface, E-mail, Web browsing, instant messaging, and word processing.

Most of the software settings are locked in before the system ships, in the hope that users won't break any applications, and that service calls can be kept to a minimum. The PIC machines will also be able to play multimedia files and show PDF and PowerPoint files, AMD said.

AMD's Geode GX500 embedded processor powers the bare-bones system. It also comes with 128 MB of DDR (double data rate) SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM), a 10GB hard drive, four USB (universal serial bus) ports for the USB keyboard and mouse and a monitor. The PIC machine also includes a modem.

In an exclusive pre-launch interview with CyberMedia News, Gino Giannotti, VP and GM, value platforms, AMD, said, "The machine is geared toward families who make the equivalent of between $1,000 and $6,000 annually. Three companies in India and Latin America will be among the pioneers to market versions of the machine." Reaching the next large group of computer and Internet users-people in countries such as China, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Russia-has become the major focus of many of the big names in computer technology. With the PIC, AMD hopes to get a piece of the action in these markets.

The PIC is a consumer solution with a suite of productivity tools that further communication, besides enabling word processing, spreadsheets, printing, etc

AMD doesn't plan to market the device itself. Rather, it hopes to take orders from telephone companies and ISPs-which will put their names on the communicator and sell it to customers-as part of a bundle with Internet access or telephony. Announcing the Indian tie-up, Dan Shine, marketing director, AMD, said, " As part of this, we are announcing our tie-up with Tata Indicom to generate and fulfill the market demand for PICs in India". Tata Indicom will position the PIC as a broadband access device for households.

Although it intends to steward the low-price PIC into the market, AMD will outsource the manufacturing of the PIC in markets including India. In Mexico, AMD has tapped Solectron to manufacture the PIC.

Explaining the business model, Giannotti said, We plan to license the PIC design to local companies, including telecommunications or Internet service providers, allowing them to use local contract manufacturers and control distribution, marketing and pricing of their PICs. Thus the companies will sell PICs under their own brand names and be free to price the machines, besides also offer microfinancing schemes".

Easwardas Nair in Mumbai