Prof. Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of MIT's Media Lab, had announced the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2005.
In 2006, the project spun out of MIT into a nonprofit called One Laptop Per Child. That June, the team demonstrated a working prototype.
The $100 machine is labelled "XO-1" and Quanta Computer, the project's contract manufacturer, plans to ship 5 million to 10 million units this year because seven nations have committed to buy the XO-1 for their schoolchildren, including Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Thailand and Uruguay.
Sometime next year, economies of scale are supposed to bring the manufacturing cost of an individual laptop down to $100. It's now somewhere around $150.
But, the India's HRD has rejected Prof. Nicholas Negroponte offer of $100 laptops.
They want to make $10 laptops for schoolchildren.
As per Indian team's current calculation, the cost is coming out to be $47.
The two designs with the ministry are from a final year student of Vellore Institute of Technology and a reseacher from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Six anchor groups set up by the ministry have been meeting regularly and IITs and IISc have been entrusted with the task of research and development of cheap laptops.
The estimated time for it to become reality is 2 years.
So, what happens to such low-cost mass technology initiatives?
For example, the Simputer was conceptualized as a machine costing around US $200 was desgined for the rural India. Ethan Zuckerman reports that by 2005, two manufacturers, PicoPeta and Encore Technologies, sold a total of only 4000 Simputers.
Today, the Amida Simputer costs $130 to $260, depending on screen size.
The Simputer fell far short of its rural target and became just another option for mobile, urban professionals.
So, would rural India get the $10 Laptop?
What say?
References:
1. Tekla S. Perry, http://spectrum.ieee.org/print/4985
2. Ethan Zuckerman, http://spectrum.ieee.org/apr07/4986/2
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$100_laptop.
4. Akshaya Mukul, akshaya.mukul@timesgroup.com
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1 comment:
Simputer is a classic example of failure of the public sector enterprise. A similar fate seems to be looming large for this initiative as well.
In the final analysis, the answer is simple. The enablers in the public enterprise system do not have any incentive to make a success out of the initiative. Or rather, even if some people have the incentive, the number of people involved who simply can't be bothered are too many.
In my view, a $100 private sector initiative is much more likely to succeed than a $40 public sector initiative
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