Intel, Microsoft killed the $100 laptop?

Times Online reports that Nicholas Negroponte’s dream of building a 100 $ laptop for underprivileged children around the world was broken by giant corporations in various ways. Times says, “Microsoft tried to kill it with words while Intel tried to kill it with dirty tricks”

The 100-dollar laptop was the idea of Nicholas Negroponte, who first mentioned about it at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2005. It was a solar powered device, low cost; to be made available to underprivileged children around the world. The idea was to spread enlightenment and freedom of information. Large, cash rich corporations were gung ho about the project and pooled in with money and support. Then later, as Times puts it, “some of them tried to kill it” and they succeeded. Well almost! The following quote from Negroponte sums things up “I had wildly underestimated the degree to which commercial entities will go to disrupt a humanitarian project.”

Three years on, the OLPC foundation (One Laptop per Child) has managed to produce one cheap laptop. It still costs $190, only 370,000 has been sold – a far cry from the numbers actually envisioned, it is called the XO and yes, it is solar powered. So, what went wrong?

First reason. This was going to be cheap. Microsoft had objections because they go to enormous lengths to ensure their products are expensive and necessary and this laptop certainly held their cause. Reason number two was the involvement of AMD. Being a cheap product, the 100$ laptop was always a mass product, produced in large numbers. Market leader Intel definitely did not want millions of cheap AMD chips out in the market, which could also have significant bearing on its unchallenged market share. Another reason was the software. No Microsoft or Apple here. The XO uses Sugar, a custom based interface for the Fedora Core. Ethan Beard, a former OLPC board member representing Google says, “This was a project that could operate outside the regular business world, and that’s not an unreasonable expectation.”

However, when there are some things that could hurt your business, large businesses -- the big boys will react in ways that could hurt badly. Intel went ahead and made their own cheap, laptops, the Classmate while Bill Gates was heard saying, “Jeez, get a decent computer”

The article points that the stand taken by Intel and Microsoft is similar to the stand by large drug companies who instead of working for the illnesses that plague the poor, (Malaria for example,) are still concentrating on low volume, high margin drugs for cancer, heart ailments and diabetes – usually diseases of the rich.