This hand-held computing device, priced at just Rs 9000, has attracted interest from professionals across the world including non-traditional countries like Africa, Latin America, Russia and Latvia besides Europe, US and Far-East to develop applications for the product. Speaking to The Financial Express, Encore Software CEO and managing director Vinay L Deshpande (also chairman MAIT) said that following the launch, the design and technical specifications of the product would be available in the public domain in line with its open standards policy.

"We have particularly received responses from individual developers across the world who would like to develop applications for the Simputer. While the details of the IML (intermediate markup language) of the product are available, the application program interface details will be made available after the national launch for these interested developers," Mr Deshpande said.

On the manufacturing front, the Simputer Trust has been approached by three manufacturers (one large company and two smaller players) for manufacturing alliances.

The trust is also putting together some demo applications (targeted at the rural/urban and local language requirements) for the scheduled launch in New Delhi.

"This device will have all the standard applications of a hand-held device and will also be a low-cost access device. This therefore opens up huge potential across all markets and applications including micro-banking, data collection and dissemination across all segments, health information, etc," he said.

The Simputer can also be used for secure Internet access purposes and has a built in smart-card reader to access user information. The prototype developed has a monochrome display but the colour display option has also been developed.

The Simputer has a 233 MHz Intel-Strong ARM processor and an USB port for connecting it to other peripheral devices. Professor Swami Manohar of the Indian Institute of Science (who is also part of the Simputer Trust) will address a seminar at the Bangalore IT.COM 2000 on the applications of the Simputer.