May 9th, 2008
Is Microsoft the answer to Africa's health woes?
In my story earlier today I pointed out how African researchers see mobile data networks as the key to improving health outcomes on the world’s poorest continent.
The French group formerly known as Fone+, now combined under Craig Mundie into Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Group, is pushing precisely the solution mentioned in our earlier story — telemedicine based on inexpensive, but powerful mobile phones.
At an event yesterday in Jakarta, headlined by Mr. Bill himself, all this was tied together skillfully, complete with heart-wrenching videos, but linked even more skillfully into Microsoft’s ambitions in the health care market.
Critics like those at Gadgettracker may carp, but a concentration on smart phones does link up well with the communications infrastructure of the developing world.
Mobile is it, while anything you can’t carry in a pocket can be easily seen, and stolen. That’s the reality and Microsoft is simply being realistic in trying to meet it.
The question I have is whether their vision isn’t still too big, a Windows Mobile smartphone with a docking station on the handset so a TV can act as a shared display. Can they bring that out at a price competitive with other mobiles?
Years ago I wrote Dana’s Iron of Laptops, an ounce on the desk is a pound in my hand. Time to update it with Dana’s Iron Law of Smartphones. A dollar up-front may be more than I can afford.
That’s especially true in Africa.
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 05/10/08
