Lenovo aims for 'rural market,' announces $199 desktop for China
By Darren Murph 
posted Aug 3rd 2007 10:50AM
posted Aug 3rd 2007 10:50AM
Looks like Lenovo won't be the one to get left behind in the pursuit of the "poor rural Chinese market," as the firm has just announced a basic PC that it plans to sell in that neck of the woods for between $199 and $399. While there are currently "no details" with respect to processor choices or other internal hardware specifications, we do know the unit will "include a keyboard and use a buyer's television set as a monitor." Interestingly, Lenovo actually went so far as to deny assumptions that it was merely "responding to Dell's initiative," and noted that it had been selling low-cost PCs to "rural Chinese families since 2004." Of note, there was no mention of which operating system would be running the show, but considering that Microsoft just halved the retail price of Vista over in China, you just may see it vying for selection.Read - Lenovo to sell $199 PC in rural China
Read - Microsoft halves Vista retail price in China
Expanding the reach of computing is a good idea regardless of who's doing it.
$199 is probably still several months' worth of work for many rural Chinese families, though, but the price will come down.
Poor rural chinese people can afford and/or care enough to spend $199US on a PC? Don't they get paid like... $2 a day or some shit?
hey man fuck u.
I guess you don't know much about China, China is doing really well in recent days. The fact is that we not only need PC but we also need them to study knowledges. There is a lot of poor people here in China, but gov and all kinds of people are making big efforts to improve their life.
I cant imagine a 200 dollar computer being ABLE to run Vista. Hell, 2 gigs of low end RAM costs that much.
Yikes! Where do you buy your RAM? Last time I checked it was $75-85 for "low end" RAM, depending on the speed.
Newegg FTW :D
Well, thats about what I said. $85 x 2 = 170. After tax or shipping you're at 200. I suppose it matters what speed RAM you're buying as well, seeing as that makes a huge difference.
Sorry, I meant for 2GB!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010170147+1052308477&name=2GB+(2+x+1GB)
Do rural Chinese even need computers, though? They may be aiming for a market that might not even exist.
This rural market is HUGE!, is almost as big that the US market, so if you achieve a %5 then you can call it a success.
Anyways, i still think that $199 is a big price, a used pc can cost half this price and can run win2k (or even worst :win98) but still worthy to office (pirate version) and browser Internet.