10月09日
News Worthy Clips
Update your vocabulary with news clips from around the world
Tech rivals target world’s poor with cheap PCs
Two of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology rivals are promoting initiatives to provide low-cost computers to developing countries.
Intel has announced that it will spend $1 billion to market inexpensive computers to such emerging markets as India, China and Mexico. Its rival, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), is already making bare-bones computers that cost $250 or less.
While these tech companies agree about the importance of bringing technology to the world’s poor, they differ about the best way to do it. Intel backs the view that the poor should have access to fully functional computers that might cost slightly more but give them rich experiences on par with everyone else. Intel has a design for a classroom computer, costing about $450, which will make its debut next year. Intel’s view aligns with the business aims of companies promoting both Windows software and Intel’s microprocessors.
AMD, by contrast, has focused on even cheaper computers and launched an effort it calls 50x15, to get 50 percent of the world’s population using computers by the year 2015. On its Web site, AMD keeps a running count of the percentage of the world’s 6.5 billion people who have access to the Internet. It now stands at 15.75 percent, or just over 1 billon people.
AMD has already introduced computers priced at less than $300 that run only a subset of Windows software. AMD is also putting its chips into the $100 laptops being developed for the world's low-income children by a non-profit organization started by MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte.
But Philanthropic aims can also pose risks for business strategies. “The tough problem is that a lot of the companies want to hit the low prices for the emerging markets, but they don’t want to cannibalize sales of the high-priced machines for developed countries,” said Rob Enderle, a technology analyst. “There are two markets in each country.”
Specialized Terms
Initiative (n) （为解决问题的）创新做法 a new action, often intended to solve a problem
Cannibalize (v) 损害；将必要资源移作他用 to take away necessary elements or resources to use elsewhere
Vocabulary Focus
Bare-bones (adj) having the basic elements or essentials
Back (v) to give support to something with money or words
On par (idiom) the same as or equal to someone else
Debut (n) first appearance in public as a performer (on stage, etc)
Running (adj) continually repeated over a period of time
Discussion Question
How to understand what Rob Enderle said in the last paragraph? Would those companies lose their market share of high-end products if they lower the products aims at the poor?
Extra Exercise
1. Translate the following sentence into Chinese, ‘The tough problem is that a lot of the companies want to hit the low prices for the emerging markets, but they don’t want to cannibalize sales of the high-priced machines for developed countries’
2. According to the recording, Bill Gates said we should develop laptop technology in developing countries instead of giving them cell phone, is that true?
说明：
1.文本摘自《Advanced 彭蒙惠英语》，由chandler30亲自录入。更多节目可访www.studioclassroom.com
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