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Are ‘one laptop per child’ sales up to expectations?

Not as well as those behind the programme to supply children in the developing world with a cheap, robust computer would like. The OLPC programme, despite plenty of goodwill and positive press coverage, has got off to a rocky start.

Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the project, hoped to make the devices by the millions to benefit from economies of scale and to get them out to the children he thinks need them. However, the ingenious battery-powered laptop, which sports an AMD processor and doesn’t sport Windows, has run into problems. One snag is that it has failed to win orders in its core market, the developing world. Speaking to the BBC, Nigeria’s education minister, Dr Igwe Aja-Nwachuku, made the not unreasonable point that there are more pressing needs in Nigeria’s impoverished schools: “What is the sense of introducing One Laptop Per Child when they don’t have seats to sit down and learn; when they don’t have uniforms to go to school in; where they don’t have facilities?”

Nigeria had initially pledged to buy 1 million laptops, but has since failed to honour that commitment — not least because they now cost more than $100: it now costs $188, plus shipping. The first production run is just 300,000 units — and of those, many (well, about half) are destined not for children in the developing world, but for well-heeled homes in North America.

This is the result of the Give One, Get One programme in the United States and Canada, which launched on November 12 — a reversal of the initial pledge that the machine wouldn’t be available in developed nations. Under the scheme, a punter pays $399, which buys two machines: one for the buyer and one for a child in countries such as Rwanda, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, and Mongolia. Earlier this week that scheme was extended to run through the Christmas period until December 31.

The project has also aroused the competitive spirit of two of the biggest players in the computing jungle: Intel and Microsoft. Intel, which is not exactly known for its forays into the hardware sector, has stormed into the market for low-cost laptops with its own Classmate, which runs Windows. At between $230 and $300, the Classmate, which sports a similarly cute, rugged and kid-friendly design to the OLPC, is likely to appeal in developing world markets, where Microsoft runs initiatives to sell stripped-down, cheap versions of Windows.

Intel is to give 3,000 Classmates to Nigeria (to sit on, perhaps?) and Libya is to buy 150,000 of the machines, saying: “The Intel machine is a lot better than the OLPC.” Some accuse Intel of cynically muscling in on what could be a lucrative market if the demand for cheap machines is indeed in the millions. Someone is going to do well out of this: whether it will be the OLPC project or Intel remains to be seen. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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