Emerging Markets Labs
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is breaking through barriers of geography, language
and culture. The transformative power of ICT is becoming as evident to the urban middle-class in
India and the rural farmer in China now as it has been to the jet-setting executive and the
tech-savvy businessman in the US and Europe in the past. Technology capabilities, earlier associated
only with PCs, are now commonplace in other devices like mobile phones and intelligent TV set-top
boxes. The processing power and capabilities of devices are increasing (e.g. cameras on mobile phones).
Higher adoption of non-PC devices like mobile phones and widespread usage of shared PCs in cyber
cafes is a common phenomenon in emerging markets. Emerging markets also tend to have a vast number
of consumers who are incredibly diverse in terms of their needs/wants and their technology adoption.
These factors challenge traditional technology, marketing and business models, and innovation remains
the key to unlock this potential.
Microsoft is on a mission to bring computing closer to the next billion people by thinking beyond
developed markets, beyond the PC and beyond English. The following are some of the emerging
market-focused projects underway at MSIDC:
Microsoft® Phone Data Manager (PDM):
Microsoft Phone Data Manager (beta) is an application that is designed to take away the worry
of losing data - specifically contacts, music, pictures and videos - from your phone. It does
that by synchronizing your phone contacts with the Windows Live Contacts store on the Internet
and by backing up your media files to your local computer.
Local Language Input:
In order to increase the adoption of computing in emerging markets, it is imperative that the
experience be available in vernacular, as opposed to just English. The focus of our local
language initiative is on intuitive input mechanisms. Soft keyboards, transliteration,
predictive input and mobile interface are just some of its features.
Address Parser for Unstructured Addresses:
Another technology area of focus for emerging markets is around search. In emerging markets
there is no de facto format for people to write addresses, leading to highly unstructured formats.
This makes it hard to find addresses and locations. We have developed a technology that interprets
unstructured addresses using partial decoding, acronym expansion and road intersections to
provide nearest matching location. Similarly, in the wake of non-geo coded Yellow Pages (YP)
data, YP entries are placed on the maps using the corresponding locality geo-codes.
Instant Answers:
“Instant Answers” helps users cut down on search time by providing relevant snippets of
information instead of the traditional web results. Answers are targeted to address specific
search queries which are highly frequent. For example, the Weather Answer displays a five-day
forecast for queries such as “weather”, “forecast”, etc. MSIDC has already extended and adapted
Answer Services for Cricket, Horoscope, PIN Codes, STD codes and are rolling out the relevant
ones to other emerging markets.
Live Search via SMS:
SMS Live Search is a technology that enables users in emerging markets, who primarily use SMS
as a means for information exchange, to access Live Search results via SMS. Some unique features
of this technology are the availability of local business results based on the user’s city
location, keeping track of user’s search session for 24 hours and delivering results formatted
to match the user’s phone capabilities along with relevant ads.