India to be fifth 'flagship' for Windows XP Starter Edition

Microsoft has chosen India as the fifth destination for its low-cost Windows package.

The software giant today announced a year-long pilot program to start shipping the Windows XP Starter Edition to India in early 2005. Earlier this week, the company made a similar move in Russia, while plans for Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia were confirmed in August as part of the firm's plan to gain market share in developing nations.

Unlike its full-fledged version which supports nine vernacular languages the stripped-down budget Windows operating system for India will only be available in Hindi. Hindi is India's national language and is widely-spoken in most major states, but the country's diverse population also speaks close to 20 other local tongues including Bengali, Telugu and Marathi.

Microsoft will consider supporting additional local languages only after the pilot program, said Yannis Dosios, Microsoft's product manager for emerging markets. Despite this, he did say: “We'll need more languages if we really want to make it relevant for India.”

As with the other four markets, the Starter Edition will only be bundled with entry-level PCs in India and is not for retail. At the time of this announcement, a mix of local and multinational computer-makers, including Acer, Hewlett-Packard, HCL and Wipro, have put their weight behind the OS, Microsoft said.

The company will only disclose pricing details to participating PC vendors and authorised distributors in India over the next few weeks, but sources peg the price to be around US$36, significantly lower than the standard edition of Windows XP.

Besides costing less, the Starter Edition also features cosmetic enhancements, including localised wallpapers, and screensavers of famous local landmarks such as India's Taj Mahal.

These tweaks were the result of user feedback on what "they deemed as representative of their country", he said. In all, 6,000 beta testers were involved in trials across all five countries, with over 200 based in India. "We also received feedback from 500 PC manufacturers," Dosios added.

Aesthetics aside, Microsoft has modified the Starter Edition's functionalities to differentiate it from its higher-priced Windows XP OS. Home networking and the ability to create multiple user accounts on a single PC has been removed, while display resolution is capped at a maximum of 800x600. More importantly, users can only run three programs or have three windows opened at once, a limitation which research firm Gartner believes could frustrate users and drive them to buy bootleg copies of Windows XP instead.

However, Dosios confirmed that applications which are automatically loaded on start-up -- such as an antivirus program or Microsoft's MSN Messenger -- will not add to the count.

"The limit only applies to programs that the user calls out. So far, we have not received any complaints from beta users on this issue," he told CNETAsia.

Following the India announcement, Dosios said Microsoft has no immediate plans to offer the Starter Edition in other emerging markets but will focus on "learning from the experience" in the five flagship countries.