The Portuguese government is confident that Intel’s low-cost laptop initiative will improve education — enough to place an order for 500,000 of the chipmaker’s Classmate PC notebooks.
With the move, Intel has nearly matched One Laptop Per Child’s (OLPC) overall total of 622,000 laptops sold to date. Nonprofit OLPC’s goal since 2005 has been to produce a $100 notebook to provide poorer countries with education; its current offering, the XO, costs about $188.
Though it would appear Intel has "won" against OLPC, OLPC President Chuck Kane stressed that competition is irrelevant to his organization’s mission.
"I want to make it clear here we’re not competing; we are complementing," Kane said in a phone interview. "When these actions take place then our mission is further advanced…. Our mission is to get laptops in the hands of children; it doesn’t necessarily have to be our laptop."
He added that Intel’s move does not spell out trouble for OLPC, because "The world is big enough for us combined — and more."
However, computer industry analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates thought differently. He said that the downfall of OLPC is that it fails to recognize it must operate with a sharp business model in order to succeed in its idealistic goals.
"[OLPC] is not really clear on what it takes to produce massive quantities of these things, deliver them and then support them in the field," Kay said in a phone interview.
He explained that Intel has the advantage in this regard, because in selling 500,000 low-cost notebooks to Portugal, the company is creating a market for such devices. Thus, more Original Equipment Manufacturers will want to work with and provide for Intel, a company that understands how to operate a business, as opposed to OLPC, Kay said.
"Intel has very long range view of how they develop a market, and that’s what they’re doing," Kay said. "It’s competitive; this is how competitive companies operate, they have a goal…. They adjust to realities of the situation; they bring in partners; they come up with marketing strategy and campaigns."
However, OLPC’s president said his organization is satisfied that a new market has emerged as a result of its efforts. He said he’d like to keep seeing Intel and other manufacturers continue producing low-cost laptops, because it only furthers the organization’s cause of providing computers to as many children as possible.
"What I’d like to see happen is an ecosystem develop here — similar to what’s happened with iPods," Kane said. "When Apple came out with that product, there were a lot of companies that surrounded the appliances of that product….We will be absolutely delighted to see people push innovation, because that’s only going to translate to other parts of the world having that opportunity that they would’ve never had before."
Portugal to sell 500,000 of Intel’s Classmate PCs [AP News]
(Photo credit: graysky/Flickr)
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