Technology propagation from the developed to the developing world: How, What and When?

Technology is increasingly spreading into our lives, making our lives easier (I wish it was so simple). With technology propagation come concerns of security, privacy and usability. But that is another topic altogether and would require us to look at some of the more subjective aspects. What today we want to touch upon is technology propagation from the developed to the developing world: How, What and When?

The basic assumption in this article is that the technology is already present in the developed world. The technological developments listed here are the ones which either have been adopted in the developing countries or are in some stage of adoption.

Let’s take a few examples of differentiated technology propagation and why did it happen so

Example 1: Virtual Shopping

Amazon.com (and similar websites) has ALL it takes for you to shop, literally everything, so much so that you don’t need to go to the market for ANYTHING. This system has been in place for many years now.

Late adoption reason: The propagation of internet itself has been quite slow in developing countries like India, which is the backbone of this factor. The trust on payment gateways is still another factor which hampers scaling up of this factor.

The culture (Non-technology) factor: Also, here people want to look things in more physical form than see those virtually.

Example 2: Mobile related innovations

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) was implemented in the United States in 2003 and in India it was implemented in 2011.

Late adoption reason: Mobiles were hardly a reckoning force in 2003 in countries like India, so no one felt the reason for it.

The culture (Non-technology) factor: MNP implementation was further delayed by a couple of years due to politico-economic reasons.

Example 3: Transportation related innovations

GPS has been an integral part of every car in US since many years, in a country like India even the trains have recently got equipped with it

Late adoption reason: Infrastructure needed to make this happen has been very sluggish in India. Comprehensive maps are still being worked upon for Tier 1 and 2 cities.

The culture (Non-technology) factor: Indians are helpful and know every location in the town, so who needs to ‘spend’ on a GPS device?

Example 4: e-Corporate

Electronic documents are in use in US for practically everything, but you can’t imagine giving a digitally signed document to anyone (except lately in Income Tax office, which has started to accept online filing of IT returns couple of years back). Online bill payment has been around in US since ages, in India’s case due to technology backwardness and security concerns the propagation has been very low.

Late adoption reason: Very few people had a Computer, even lesser had internet and even the babus still in government offices never knew that world is experiencing a technology age.

The culture (Non-technology) factor: Indians treat hand written as the FINAL word and no compromises on this FULL STOP

Example 5: Online presence

In US people are connected not just from computers but also from their mobile handsets, US has three speed broadband plans, 10Mbps, 50Mbps & 100 mbps, here the most privileged ones are at 1 mbps.

Late adoption reason: Its mostly a catching up game in terms of technology, by the time we develop our infrastructure to enjoy kbps speeds and try to break even, the world is already shifted onto mbps

The culture (Non-technology) factor: We in the developing world are very patient and hence don’t mind if we have to travel miles to find internet or wait ½ a minutes for a single page of a site to load.

Example 6: Customized technology

Analytics is the buzz word in developed world right now, it is giving data & pointers on how to increase sales, how to do targeted advertising, study customer data to give better customer experience. Here we don’t have the basic office automation yet, so even talking about analytics will be a huge ask.

Late adoption reason: NA (we have yet not fully developed the precursors to these)

The culture (Non-technology) factor: In developing countries people come very cheap, so cheap that automation will be very costly and hence won’t yield you an ROI

What these examples show to us is that in order to lead from the technical front one needs a combination of 4Cs:

Congenial environment – everyone wants to lap up a new offering

Conviction – the system acceptability should be based on merit and no other factor

Confidence of the consumer – the system should be so fool proof that it even a new offering shouldn’t cause pain to the user

Culture – The culture of people in developing parts is richer and hence bringing about a change is tougher

And of-course even if these 4Cs are there, you might still fail in India if there is lack of Political WILL.

The battle of the mobile device OS

Android or someone else?

Android, the Google’s OS for mobiles devices is generating quite a buzz these days. Android has seen a meteoric rise in the last couple of years, as someone who can challenge the supremacy of Apple iOS. What Android has done in past we all know, what will it be able to achieve in the next few years is a billion dollar question. Will it be the number ONE OS on mobile devices? Will Apple kill it? Will there be someone else who will come and take on the pie? Whatever happens, one thing is for sure, that we are going to see a fierce competition in the mobile world and as it happens always in such cases, customers are going to get some great offerings from every company which is in the fray.

Android will succeed if… and it’s a big big if….

To know what this ‘if’ means we need to travel back a bit in history. Let’s go back couple of decades and see the Personal Computer OS landscape. Microsoft had a ‘native’ 3.1 Windows while Apple was UI based OS and in many ways was ahead of times…  Microsoft did put its bits right (explained below) and was able to make sure that it became an undisputed leader in the OS space and continues to be one even today.

Google ‘just’ has to do what MS did with PC OS. But, doing ‘just’ (as referred in the last sentence) requires some great and thought provoking measures both short and long term. Apple OS might sound cool, people may be crazy about it, but a mere 4% use it. 90% still use Windows. Practically everyone uses it!

What MS did on the PC front? ( Or what Android should do)

Create a brilliant ecosystem in addition to its usual offerings:

Come think of it, MS could have sat back and enjoyed what it created in the first place, Windows. It was present on practical every PC, even then in order to ‘retain’ its lead over others it come up with landmarks like MSDN, Visual Studio, WER, MS Office.. just to name a few…

Not just that, it even made us users develop our apps on its platform, hence making us even more dependent

Have an awesome reach: Reach everyone and have them like you (even if not love you)

MS introduced server class OS to supplement its end user offerings, (Windows NT, Server), it made sure that every aspect we called software today on the device was touched by it.

Do best what you are capable of doing (in short, leave the rest to other folks): Companies like Dell, Lenovo develop the laptops/desktop hardware (and hence we get the best of both worlds) ; similarly, best processors are made by Intel/AMD etc. Remember Apple had        to finally shift to Intel for processors (from Motorola)

Keep copying Apple’s cool Interface : Apple will remain to be best in providing the best user interface (they have brilliant folks for that), just make sure you copy them and do it fast

Even though you buy a Dell/Lenovo/Acer/Asus laptop, you always get the Windows Logo! Like world has already started to get android logo even when they buy a Sony, HTC or Samsung phone. After few years, there will be tons of companies making just the hardware of the mobile device and all of them will run on a single OS.

Android is the best placed, but it will not be easy for it to win. But one thing is sure, the Winner will have to be follow what Microsoft did [not just on the execution front, but also on the vision and passion front], and as they say, the rest will be history.