Intel – One Laptop Per Child partnership failed in Peru
January 6, 2008
The One Laptop Per Child program, that aims to produce and sell its XO Laptops for $100 dollars and sell them en-masse to 3rd world countries for use by children in schools, as you may have heard in the news has lost chip-maker Intel as a partner.
Despite early promises by dozens of countries to buy the laptops in the hundreds of thousands for their children; as of yet hardly any of orders have been realised. The lack of orders means the laptops have not been able to be produced in high enough numbers to keep the price down to $100. The program came up with new ways to get laptops to children such as the Buy one Give one effort.
While this was unfolding, Intel was going out of its way to undermine the project – accused to be trying to break the market for XOs with its own laptops sold at a loss. XO Laptops were seen by Intel as a threat, whose chips were made by rival AMD at a special price. Getting millions of third world children computer-literate by buying XO laptops would mean the few 10s of thousands of Intel chips that would otherwise be bought would not be.
To counter Intel’s hostility, non-profit One Laptop Per Child organiser Nicholas Negroponte invited Intel to join the program and also produce chips for the XO. Intel agreed, but continued their work to undermine the XO with their own products anyway, angering Nicholas Negroponte.
But it was in Peru that the final blow was dealt by Intel that has ended the partnership.
Peruvian President Alan García, is the leader of one of the few countries that actually went ahead with bulk orders of the XO laptops, ordering 250,000. Despite his Government’s confirmation of the order, an Intel Saleswoman tried to scupper the deal. The New York Times reported that Intel attempted to persuade a Peruvian minister to drop the XO Laptop in favour of a more expensive Intel-based machine with partner Microsoft’s operating system. The XO deal went ahead however, and Peruvian children are now beginning to enjoy the ultra-cheap low-power laptops.
Intel’s actions were the last straw for Nicholas Negroponte, who demanded Intel stop undermining his charitable project. Intel’s responded publicly; “At the end of the day, we decided we couldn’t accommodate that request.” Intel then ended its partnership saying it had “philosophical” differences with the non-profit organisation.
The Cats of Parque Kennedy
Ancón
Priest killed in robbery at San Francisco Convent, Lima
Peru's hard-hitting Oscar film hope divides opinion [Featured]
Leguías Lima of the early 1900s
Peru at the Movies: The Emperor’s New Groove
TWENTY rare pink dolphins killed in Peru's Amazon
Oechsle - Peru's original department store
Police recover Inca mummy among artefacts to sold on black market
Chicharrón for breakfast, there's nothing like it
Klaus Koschmieder - Latest Chachapoyan Discoveries
Building boats in Santa Rosa
While in Perú i did notice the debate on one laptop per child. I kind of had the feeling that it was an AG gimick and maybe designed to create a huge purchase order with some governmental gain.
Running at about the same time were stories abut Perú being bottom of the pile of the educational attainment ladder and I heard quite a lot about militancy among the teaching workforce.
Working for just one month in a voluntary education project, seeing the lack of basic resources in one local school, seeing the number of children out on the streets at night selling chewing gum and finger puppets and realising that there are many children who do not receive a basic entitlement to education led me to believe that laptops are a bit of a diversion from the reality of the situation. Of course children can learn from computers but are the teachers trained ready and willing and can all the children manage handwriting, reading and number to a reasonable level?
You’re very right, about the gimick and the need of better teachers rather than laptops. But then there are those small towns away from the big cities some resources and where the kids don’t go out at night to sell sweets where the teachers aren’t too terrible and something like this would be a good resource. In the better of the state schools this would work – but maybe the money should be spent on the worst of the state schools instead.
I agree a balanced approach. Check out the BBC digital planet podcast for some info on the one laptop project. Calendar arrived today, great thanks,
Alan
I read this story a couple months ago and thought all was going wellI’m still not too clear on what happened.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/24/196240&from=rss
Great blog by the way I have it linked on my site if you don’t mind.
Hi Julio.
I’ve heard good things about the project too, which will go ahead as normal. Peru rejected the advances of Intel to scrap the project and buy the more expensive Intel-Windows machines.
All that will happen now is that these computers will be soley AMD-based and Intel and Microsoft will be more open about their attempts to convince the third world to pay more for more costly-to-run computers with expensive software.
What is your site?
[...] highly-trained in open source technologies might lead to Peru’s institutions rejecting hard-sold and expensive lock-in agreements with companies such as Microsoft when the same software, often of [...]