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Ends Its Collaboration With Nonprofit Laptop Project
By STEVE STECKLOW
January 4, 2008
Intel Corp. says it has dropped out of a nonprofit project to sell
millions
of low-cost laptops in the developing world, citing disagreements with
the
organization's founder, Nicholas Negroponte.
The divorce ends a stormy relationship between the Santa Clara,
Calif.-based
chipmaker and the One Laptop Per Child project, which recently began
selling
a low-cost laptop in African, Latin American and other countries. The two
sides had been feuding over Intel's aggressive marketing of a low-cost
laptop of its own design in many of the same countries the nonprofit had
been targeting. The OLPC machine uses a microprocessor from Intel's chief
competitor, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
After more than a year of public sniping between Intel and OLPC, an Intel
representative joined OLPC's board in July, and the company had been
planning to announce a new, low-cost, OLPC-designed laptop based on an
Intel
microprocessor at next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. But
the Intel representative has quit the OLPC board and the new machine has
been scrapped, according to Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.
"We've reached a philosophical impasse with OLPC," Mr. Mulloy said. He
added
that Mr. Negroponte had demanded that Intel stop selling its own-designed
laptop, known as the Classmate, in developing countries and stop
supplying
its chips to other laptops marketed to schoolchildren in those countries.
"We can't accommodate that request," Mr. Mulloy said.
He said Intel favors offering "many solutions" to developing countries,
not
just the OLPC laptop. He also said dropping the Classmate would hurt
Intel's
relationships with overseas manufacturers and suppliers. Tens of
thousands
of Classmates have been sold.
Mr. Negroponte, a professor on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, couldn't be reached to comment. The simmering dispute between
Intel and Mr. Negroponte was detailed in a page-one article in The Wall
Street Journal in November.
The concept of a low-cost laptop for the world's poorest schoolchildren
has
sparked interest from world leaders and technology companies since Mr.
Negroponte first proposed it three years ago as a way to bridge the
technology divide between rich and poor countries. He vowed to get such a
device, costing only $100, into the hands of as many as 150 million
children
by this year.
Although OLPC has managed to develop an innovative machine, it has
failed to
achieve its target price; the current model sells overseas for $188. And
because of increasing competition, it has been unable to get more than a
handful of large orders from governments.
As sales problems mounted, the project recently reversed course on its
plan
not to sell the device to American consumers. In November, it began
selling
pairs of laptops to U.S. and Canadian consumers for $399 under a program
in
which buyers could keep one and give the other to a student in a poor
country such as Haiti. The program ended Monday. OLPC has called the
program, known as "Give One. Get One," successful, but it hasn't
disclosed
total sales figures.
Mr. Negroponte serves on a committee to protect the editorial integrity
of
Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal that was
acquired
last month by News Corp.
Write to Steve Stecklow at steve.stecklow@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119940537839566305.html
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586754115002717.html
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