Microsoft turns focus to emerging markets

Microsoft turns focus to emerging markets: "Microsoft Corp.'s research unit is turning to social scientists in a new effort to understand the long-term possibilities for computer technology in developing countries.
A Microsoft Research lab, to be inaugurated tomorrow in Bangalore, India, plans to employ anthropologists, ethnographers and others to observe and document the lives of people in India's rural villages.
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A primary aim of the new group is to help Microsoft understand the situation in rural villages before the company tries to create appropriate technologies for them -- rather than first creating the technologies and then trying to find areas where they might apply."