The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) board of directors today announced that Quanta Computer of Taiwan was chosen as the original design manufacturer (ODM) for the US$100 laptop project. The decision was made after the board reviewed bids from several possible manufacturing companies.
Quanta has agreed to devote significant engineering resources in Q1 and Q2 2006, with a target of bringing the product to market in Q4, according to OLPC, adding that the launch of 5-15 million units will be both in large-scale pilot projects in seven countries (China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand), with one million units in each of these countries, and an additional modest allocation of machines to seed developer communities in a number of other selected countries. A commercial version of the machine will be explored in parallel, added the organization.
“Quanta would like to contribute its industry-leading laptop technologies to the future success of the project, in hope of affording children worldwide with opportunities not only to close the ‘digital divide,’ but also to bridge the ‘knowledge divide.’ This project signifies a new stage and scale for the laptop industry by including those children never before considered to be laptop users,” said Quanta founder and chairman, Barry Lam.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a Delaware-based, non-profit organization created by Nicholas Negroponte and other faculty members from the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of one laptop per child, according to OLPC, adding that the laptops will be rugged, Linux-based, and so energy efficient that hand-cranking alone can generate sufficient power for operation. OLPC stated that mesh networking will give many machines Internet access from one connection and that the pricing goal will start near US$100 and then steadily decrease. Corporate members include Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, Nortel, and Red Hat, noted the organization.
As reported earlier, Taiwan notebook makers stated that the OLPC project will need huge support from governments to solve a variety of software and hardware problems including handwriting recognition, translation, and panel issues, all under a low-cost production budget. The makers indicated that the OLPC group negotiated with Quanta, Compal, Inventec, and Wistron in selecting a maker for the inexpensive laptop and further noted that if all the software and hardware components for the low-cost notebook were ready, mass production would be able to begin within five months.
Taiwan-based Quanta to manufacture US$100 laptop computer
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This entry was posted by Administrator on Thursday, December 15th, 2005, at 2:34 am, and was filed in IT-Box.
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