OLPC faces 'vicious' rivalry in laptop market
Published: 17 Sep 2008 11:32 BST
When the One Laptop per Child organisation first mooted the idea of a super low-cost laptop aimed at schoolchildren in the developing world some years ago, it was arguably on its own in the market.
Since the not-for-profit organisation first unveiled its covetable wind-up PCs, however, it's seen the number of commercial interests hungry for a piece of the same pie grow and grow.
David Cavallo, chief learning architect for the OLPC, who gave the keynote at the Association for Learning Technology's annual conference earlier this month, is upbeat about the new entrants into the low-cost educational laptop market that his organisation arguably kick-started.
Cavallo told ZDNet.co.uk's sister site, silicon.com: "It's great. We take that as a huge success. Some years from now we may not be making laptops at all and that's fine because we're not a for-profit company, we're not going to be a laptop company and we really are focused on the mission and the belief — it's a humanitarian project… to really provide education everywhere particularly for the most marginalised, so the fact that there are a lot of devices coming into being everywhere we think that's great. There's more than a billion kids in the developing world so there's room for everybody."
However, he described the response of some commercial laptop makers to the OLPC project as "unfortunate".
"What I think has been surprising and somewhat unfortunate is that some of the companies have taken this as just a market to compete in — and compete in a very vicious way and that's unfortunate, because we're not trying to take market share and make profit or knock anybody else out," he said.
Cavallo said the OLPC project is going to continue to keep pushing to reduce the cost of the hardware "to really make it accessible", adding: "We hope to keep moving the market and if others come in and keep filling in the space that's created fantastic, all the better."
Giving laptops to schoolchildren in developing countries has had some unlikely effects, according to the OLPC exec. While sceptics claimed the laptops would be sold or stolen by their young owners, it seems they have been converting truants into school-lovers and encouraging kids to brush up their reading and writing skills by turning to blogging.
The laptops are also having an impact on children's career choices, according to Cavallo. "If you talk to a kid in Brazil the girls want to become fashion models and the boys want to become football players. This changed," he said.
"They do much more reading and writing. It [laptop technology] lets in other ways of thinking about teaching and learning away from rote and gives support to do that. So we've seen just in the basic kind of work that also has really improved. It's laying the basis for a much more dramatic improvement over time. It doesn't happen immediately."
The hardware has also had a positive impact beyond the children — engaging parents...
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