India's "$10 Laptop" To Cost $100 After All

narramissic writes "In case you missed it, India's Minister of State for Higher Education yesterday announced the development of a $10 laptop that will target higher education applications. There were no specifications given for the laptop and the rock-bottom price raised questions about government subsidies. Today, the figure was corrected: It's not a $10 laptop; it's a $100 laptop. Still no specs though."

Comments

Re:In before...

[dashesy]

It is all for poor and needy. 9$ Hardware. 10$ for poor oil industry (was 1$ for transportation before). 45$ for poor M$ stockholders. 36$ for poor politicians.

I still think $10 would be possible.

[StreetStealth]

Even if this story began as a typo, I don't think a $10 laptop is a pie in the sky.

The key here is to rethink our expectations for a laptop versus what the developing world actually needs. The OLPC, for example, is a beautiful machine, but its capabilities are honestly far beyond a baseline which would still make a huge impact on schoolkids living in poverty.

Imagine something like the following:

- Reflective, passive-matrix black and white screen

- Low-end (ARM9-based?) system on a chip

- 256 meg flash-based hard drive

- Custom, miniscule Linux distro consisting mostly of a web browser

- Big, old-style NiCd batteries

- 1995-style trackball

- Wired network adapter; USB host with optional wi-fi addon

With some creative engineering, I could imagine this sort of system getting down to the $tens, and with the kind of mass production you'd need to get this to many millions of kids, I think an ultimate $10 pricetag is completely doable.

Of course, I'm not actually a product engineer, so perhaps a real one could tighten up my specs (or dash my unrealistic idealism on the rocks).

Re:I still think $10 would be possible.

[nbert]

I'm neither a product engineer, but I highly doubt that there is any way to produce anything resembling a laptop below around $90. Just add up the cost for raw materials and then think about the per unit cost of manufacturing the final good. For example look at CPUs: Regarding energy consumption and engine costs it's not so much difference if you build a high end chip or something very low-level. I'm not saying that they feature the same per-unit cost, but they are pretty close. The big difference is that the high-end chip must pay for all the research put into it. Just in case Intel decided to release 386 again they wouldn't be much cheaper than $30. If that doesn't convince you look at the casing: We are not talking about $1 per unit. It's more likely that you will pay around 3 just for the most basic design.

And if you are still in doubt: Take a look at the RAM prices. This industry currently has to cope with negative margins in many areas, which means that you are paying less than it costs them to produce it. Still I couldn't find anyone selling 256 megs for less than $5.

The computer I bought in 1993 might feature a market price below $10, but that doesn't mean that the production costs were anywhere near that line.

Offshoring?

[192939495969798999]

From TFA:
"A low-cost laptop being developed by the Indian government in tandem with two leading Indian education and research institutions will cost US$100 when available, and not $10 as was earlier stated by the government."

First it was $10, then "uh oh, spageddios", it's $100... still think offshoring is a sound business investment?

Re:Give it a day...

[operagost]

It was the original Pentium from 60 to 90 MHz that had the floating-point bug. Don't feel bad: apparent at least two mods didn't know that either.

Re:Give it a day...

[Anonymous Coward]

Simputer was not a bad product at all. It lacked the right kind of support by the government and other institutions when the promoters of the product needed it. At a time when Indian IT was largely riding on software skills, outsourcing and bodyshopping some young professors of the Indian Institute of Science came up with the bold idea of making a low-cost handheld computing device. Things did not work out for no fault of theirs. India missed a great opportunity.

Re:at what cost though?

[elgatozorbas]

Very true. On the other hand, back in the days the content was also less demanding. It is like participating in a 2008 car race with a Ford T. In its days it was great, but conditions have changed. (moderate car analogy...)

Re:at what cost though?

[TheRaven64]

Possibly a better car analogy would be giving an Indian family a Model T. Even though it's horrendously out of date, it's probably better than walking in a few situations.

Re:A $10 Laptop? The best slavery can build.

[Sj0]

Corporations almost never follow sound economic policies. Falls under "not my problem".