HP Labs India

Sify.com
April 07, 2006
By Dan Goodin in Palo Alto (California)

Hewlett-Packard Co. on Thursday showed off new products and research tailored to India, including a writing tablet that makes it easier to enter characters from two of India's national languages into a computer.

HP is also aiming the technologies at China and Russia in an attempt to adapt its products to countries with languages, economies and cultures that differ from HP's strongholds in the United States and western Europe.

"If you're in the high technology business, you need to look ahead. The ball keeps moving," Dick Lampman, HP's senior vice president of research, told reporters.

He spoke at a demonstration at HP Labs headquarters that featured technologies designed at HP Labs India, which was established in 2002.

The square tablet, which HP dubbed the Gesture Keyboard, allows a computer user to use a penlike stylus to enter characters in Hindi and Kannada, two of India's 14 national languages. The 6-inch-by-6-inch device was introduced in India two weeks ago and costs about $50. HP plans to offer updates so it will eventually serve speakers of additional languages.

"This is the way we learn to write as children," said Ajay Gupta, the director of HP Labs India. "There's absolutely no new learning required."

Among the other research the company demonstrated:

• Software that prints charts, graphics and literature that accompanies television broadcasts. The product, which is still being tested, is aimed at serving schools and community centres in countries where Internet access still lags far behind the availability of TV broadcasts.
• A system that uses a barcode to electronically confirm the authenticity of printed documents. HP hopes government agencies will use it to deliver land records and other official documents to cyber cafes in remote areas so farmers don't have to travel to a central office.
• An electronic tablet that electronically stores information entered into forms. It would allow census takers and people doing market surveys to fill out forms with pen and paper and then digitally transmit the contents to a computer.

HP is hoping the products will help it increase revenue by expanding into new markets. The Palo Alto-based company got about 35 per cent of its 2005 revenue from the United States, and less than 10 per cent of its sales from India. US revenue grew less than 5 per cent between 2003 and 2005. It grew by more than 28 per cent in non-US countries.

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