India Hopes to Make $10 Laptops a Reality

sas-dot writes "We all know Nicholas Negroponte's $100 OLPC. India, which was a potential market, rejected it. India's Human Resources Development ministry's idea to make laptops at $10 is firmly taking shape with two designs already in and public sector undertaking Semiconductor Complex evincing interest to be a part of the project. So far, the cost of one laptop, after factoring in labor charges, is coming to $47 but the ministry feels the price will come down dramatically considering the fact that the demand would be for one million laptops."

Comments

Re:I must be living in a story book..

[demon driver]

never thought I would see competition for supplying education to the poor You won't - unless there's some major profit in it. The whole OLPC thing - even if they'd really sell the pieces covering only production costs - is about developing new markets.

Moreover, supplying laptops does not really equal "supplying education". Millions of laptops won't do any good if no huge amounts are being invested in the concerned countries' educational systems at the same time, in order to even be able to make reasonable educational use of the equipment.

This whole thing is one of the prototypical cases of industry making big business while successfully showing a friendly face, pretending pure philanthropy at the same time.

Like Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank who even got the Nobel Prize for making money from copious adhesion contracts with the Indian poor, while using them to impose ridiculously far-reaching constrictions on their private life.

Re:I must be living in a story book..

[Hal_Porter]

Hey there sparky! The good ole' US of A is doing it's best. Brazil and India shouldn't count it out just yet.