Microsoft aims to bridge global digital divide

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that it would build on existing efforts to bridge the digital divide worldwide and announced several new ventures, including a $3 software package for governments that subsidize student computers.

The software maker said it would sell a Student Innovation Suite, which includes Windows XP Starter Edition and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, for $3 to governments that subsidize a certain percentage of the cost of PCs for primary and secondary students for use at home and at school, starting in the second half of the year.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company also pledged to open 90 additional “innovation centers” in countries around the world. Microsoft has already opened 110 of the centers, which offer classes and access to technology for academics, local start-up software companies and other groups.

In addition, the company said it designed a website to help graduating engineering students in India get additional training and find jobs. The site will go online by the end of the year.

Orlando Ayala, a senior vice president for Microsoft’s emerging segments market development group, said it took 35 years for the company’s software to reach 1 billion people; reaching the next billion isn’t just a side philanthropic project for Microsoft.

“Many of these people, we think, are going to be consumers down the road,” Ayala said.