The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a charitable organisation that aims to produce a cheap, robust laptop that Governments in the developing world can buy for about US$100 to provide computers to children. The idea is allow millions of children to leapfrog into the 21st Century and access more of what the world can offer.
The project is headed by Profession Nicholas Negroponte and is due to start shipping laptops this year. When the idea was first floated at Davos in January 2005 it was widely seen as impossible, and was apparently dismissed by Intel Chairman Craig Barrett. However, as the launch date gets closer, more and more people seem keen to launch commercial versions of the OLPC machine.
Intel have launched a low cost machine called the Classmate and are now being accused of trying to sabotage the OLPC effort. Negroponte claims that Intel have distributed literature to Governments, attacking the OLPC concept and stressing the benefits of the Intel based Classmate. Barrett of Intel defends this approach by saying “That’s the way our business works.”. Negroponte asserts that the real issue is that the OLPC machine uses the AMD chip, and Intel is prepared to sell its machine at a loss in order to damage the One Laptop Per Child machine.
I suspect that unless this is sorted quickly it could rebound badly on Intel. Since Enron there as been a change in the public’s feelings about business ethics. Fighting hard to produce better chips than AMD is still seen as a good thing, but damaging the chances of third world children to gain access to IT as a method of hurting your competitor is likely to play badly.
The BBC has more on this issue here.
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