One Laptop per Child Still a Moderate Success
1 December 2007The One Laptop per Child project’s “Give One, Get One” program has been extended through December 31 as donations averaged about $2 million a day. On that pace, the OLPC should move about 490,000 units by the end of the year.
The promotion began on November 12 and had been scheduled for two weeks. Under the program, a contributor pays $399 plus $25 shipping for two laptops. The contributor gets one, and a child in a developing country like Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia and Rwanda gets the other one.
In a statement on Thanksgiving, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, said the promotion will be extended to the end of the year. He said the promotion got good response, so people are asking for more time to organize groups.
XO laptops, the flagship model of the OLPC project, can be bought for educational purchases in quantities of 100-999 at $299 each; 1,000-9,999 at $249 each, and 10,000 and up at $199 each. That scale means that if a person buys 10,000 XOs in the Give One, Get One program, he can hit the $100 barrier per laptop, the OLPC’s initial price target.
Donations to the Give One, Get One program have averaged $2 million a day. $2 million a day equates to a little more than 10,000 XO laptops a day at $200 each, which means that over 14 days, OLPC has sold roughly 140,000 units. In other words, 70,000 units would go to developing nations.
An article in the Wall Street Journal explores whether the OLPC project is a success. The article said that Negroponte created a great idea but never hit his $100 mark for the price of the XO. It also said only 2,000 students in a pilot program have laptops, but some big orders may be on the way.
Mass production has just begun and the first run is roughly 300,000 laptops. It’s possible that the OLPC project gains momentum, but it appears that Negroponte’s initial goal of 150 million users by the end of 2008 is impossible.
But the promotion could still be seen as a success. It’s predicted that there will be 490,000 units sold by the end of 2007, which isn’t chump change. That means 245,000 units will go to the developing world.
Then look at the big companies on board: Microsoft is giving Windows away for $3 to battle Linux in emerging markets. Intel has created a solid educational PC with the Classmate. These are initiatives that were spawned by Negroponte’s idea. Negroponte wanted cheap Linux laptops with AMD chips. Of course, just the thought of Linux being ported to kids everywhere was enough to spur Microsoft into action.
Overall, despite its shortcomings, the OLPC campaign will end up a moderate success, and perhaps act as a catalyst for future high-tech education campaigns.
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