Microsoft offers $500 Vista PC to Indian students

In a bid to boost the Windows Vista user base in “emerging markets”, Microsoft is backing the IQ PC, a $500 computer system targeting students in India. The IQ comes with the most basic version of the Windows Vista operating system, an Office suite and applications to help the students practice English and prepare for exams.

The IQ PC price tag is significantly higher than the $300 average price of a computer in India.

While Orlando Ayala, senior vice president for Microsoft’s emerging segments market development group, described IQ PC as “low cost” and “affordable”, Wayan Vota, director of IESC Geekcorps, an organization based in Washington, DC, told Associated Press that “The cost is still a barrier to families outside the elite middle class of the developing world.”

But an industry analyst at Forrester Research, Josh Bernoff, believes that the IQ PC may succeed, despite the higher price tag.

“The middle class there doesn’t want to be considered a poor and undeveloped nation,” Bernoff told Associated Press.

“If you want to grow up to be somebody working in a call center, somebody learning English and doing software development and other professional work in an outsourced environment, you probably want to start on a Microsoft PC,” he said.

It seems that Microsoft motivation isn’t to sell low-cost computer, since the company can easily offer Windows XP instead of Vista at a much lower price. This is all but a strategy to increase Microsoft’s Vista user base.

The IQ PC is a product of collaboration between Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices and Indian PC maker Zenith Computers.

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