South Africa is to be the first country outside the pilot country of Brazil to benefit from a new multinational pay-as-you-go computer-financing scheme aimed at promoting PC usage in developing countries.
Inspired by the success of prepaid mobile phones, the PC pay-as-you-go initiative is a joint venture by Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel, Lenovo, Phoenix Technologies and Transmeta.
The partners plan to work with PC makers, banks and retailers in emerging markets in Africa, Middle East, Asia and South America to lower the financial barrier to buying a computer.
"South Africa`s growing economy and advanced banking system made it an attractive place to start with this scheme," says Gaith Kadir, GM for AMD in the Middle East and Africa.
End of 2006
Local implementation of the scheme is scheduled for the end of 2006 and will be closely followed by Mexico and then other countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the rest of Africa and South America.
The project is enabled by Microsoft`s FlexGo software technology and AMD`s Efficeon microprocessor, which was designed by Transmeta to provide a secure hardware foundation for the new pay-as-you-go and subscription computing models.
"The AMD Efficeon processor is the industry`s first processor designed specifically to support Microsoft FlexGo technology," says Kadir.
The scheme will enable purchasers to take home a computer loaded with the Microsoft Windows operating system and then pay it off through a monthly subscription agreement or buying prepaid cards of computing time, similar to those used for prepaid mobile phones.
Details to be finalised
The details of the offering to be made in SA are still to be worked out, but Kadir says consumers will be able to choose from a variety of different processor capacities to meet the needs of home users all the way up to small and medium enterprises.
"The highly-secure Efficeon microprocessor is tightly coupled with the motherboard and will shut down the computer when a computing time prepaid voucher has expired and will lock it down until another voucher is loaded," explains Kadir.
Once the purchaser has used computing time vouchers to the value of the purchase price of the PC, the Efficeon processor unlocks permanently.
"This financing scheme is aimed at making technology affordable to everyone and AMD believes it will help accelerate the company`s 50-by-15 initiative to establish a global network of partners to help connect 50% of the world`s population to the Internet by 2015," says Kadir.
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