Hewlett-Packard Labs in India

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HP created a presence for its research division, HP Labs, in India in 2002.^[1] The mission for the new division was to create technology inspired by problems in countries such as India.

The first stated mission of the lab was

^[2] "to generate innovations targeted at the world's emerging economies by understanding relevant social, cultural, economic and technological drivers." The mission morphed over time as follows.

• In 2006, the mission statement read as:^[3] "HP Labs India is focused on creating new technologies for addressing the IT needs of the next billion customers for HP."
• In 2013, the mission statement read as:^[4] "to create break-through innovations that enable HP to lead in the new wave of opportunities from rapidly growing economies."

The lab created concepts for simplifying computer and Internet interactions. Gesture KeyBoard (GKB)^[5] was an early attempt by the lab to create a pen-based local-language-interaction-support for PCs.

Since low-cost mobile phones without data-plan were being used in higher volume in India, the lab developed a solution that can enable mobile users with only voice and SMS services to access websites. The technology was called SiteOnMobile.^[6]

Another hypothesis generated about technology in the Indian market was that many people in India own high-end Television and smart mobile phones, especially with the advent of Google Android phones. A new technology hypothesis was created so that Internet access to a large number of households and small-or-medium enterprises could be realized using a TV-connected broad-band device. The technology that demonstrated the efficacy of the hypothesis was called HP set-top box^[7] and Vayu Internet Device (VIND).

The latest technology demonstrator was in the area of education called VideoBook,^[8] which aimed to reduce the cognitive load on text-book learning by automatically augmenting text-book content with videos from the Web.

In 2002, research was organized into research areas as follows:

• Language technology such as speech communication interfaces for computers
• Low cost devices for Internet-access
• Communication concepts for small towns and rural areas in developing countries
• Socio-economic research
• New models for human interactions

In 2013, research was organized into research projects as follows:

• Future school
• Crowd Cloud
• Smart Mobile Services
• Interaction Technologies

Although the technique for research management changed, the focus of research remained creation of technologies for emerging markets.