XO, This is Good Bye?

2007

Although relatively cheap, many governments in developing countries just simply could not afford allocating such a high budget in education. There are cries from other ministries (e.g. food and agriculture or health) that claim their issues are of higher priority than education.

OLPC tries to get more funding on the project so that these countries could get grants and subsidies in getting these laptops. But still this could not save the whole world.

When this scenario is written, AMD--the processor supplier and main sponsor of OLPC--is reported in big financial trouble. Taking only a small part of the market that is dominated by giant Intel, AMD's future looks bleak. ("AMD issues revenues warning", Financial Times, Published: Mar 05, 2007 )

At this point, the "$100 laptop" is not actually selling at that price. The price when it is distributed at the second quarter of 2007 will be about $140. They targeted at the end of 2008 it will be $100.

There are cheaper laptops that are commercially made such as made by Chinese and Taiwanese companies. Although their capability and capacity is not comparable to XO, their pricing could nevertheless attract the governments more.f

2010

The upper stream materials supplier cannot lower their materials price (partly from the cost of capital taxes 35%). The manufactures cannot across the price margin because of the high price of the upper stream cost and low price at end users’ market. XO's could not go much lower and the developing countries still couldn't afford to pay.

AMD declares bankruptcy and is now approaching a long settlement with its lawyers. The US supreme court decides that the company shouldn't be liquidated but rather try to be revitalised and Intel is chosen to run the revitalising operation.

Intel's management refuses to make cheaper processors specially for XO because they want to promote their own processors. Of course Intel will only tell--as an excuse--OLPC that AMD's current condition will make it not possible to continue unprofitable projects or those with low income. Intel's decision sadly is backed by the court as it is now the caretaker of the company that is trying to get away from bankruptcy. Intel asks OLPC to wait for a few years until AMD can really leaves the bankruptcy situation.

In the meantime OLPC has no other choice than to use Intel's processor, but it's higher in price. OLPC's supporters could help subsidies this increase but not enough to cover the whole increase. XO's price then up slightly and will not touch $100 in the near future.

To make things worse, USA decides to attack Iran on the ground of nuclear weapons proliferation. As with the Iraq attack, USA and its allies did not ask for the UN's permission. This angers the world.

USA's attack is good news to some dictators of the developing countries who want to keep their hegemony over the country. They argue that America as the centre of democracy is given a full power to attack any countries it pleases. This argument wins them a backing support not to follow UN's pressure to exercise democracy in their countries. In keeping this hegemony, exposing their country's children to XO would be a very dangerous proposition. This is because with OLPC free internet scheme, these children will be connected to the world and obtain information and compare what happens in their country with what is happening in the world. The government then will have to faced enquiries on their (corrupt and totalitarian) governance. This is of course what these governments want.

With that, participation in OLPC from the target countries does not improve.

Countries that finally have enough fund in 2010 to join OLPC now could not afford the new pricing. They understand the importance of this education method and that's why they look for an alternative machine from commercial market. They think a slightly lower capacity won't matter much for the kids.

If the government don't trust the competitor's quality, they would rather use the fund to finance the education the conventional way (brick and mortar with students and teachers)

2017

AMD failed to get out from its bankruptcy and in the end it had to be liquidated. Intel is now clearly THE processor giant in the market after loosing its biggest rival.

Since Intel develops its own low-cost laptop (which is 4 times more expensive than XO), Intel see OLPC as a competitor and thus joining or helping OLPC in producing low-cost computer simply just attacking itself.

In an even more interesting twist, Intel's long-time partner Microsoft is pressing Intel not to help OLPC because that project is nothing but helping the Open Source community (Microsoft's rival). As a loyal partner, Intel feels obliged to honour the request.

The education of ministry keeps the traditional ways of teaching and the school qualities are still far away compared with developed countries and only the rich families’ children can go to school and the poor families’ children have to stay at home to work as labors for their family or black labors.

The poor stays poor and because of the lower healthy education, the birth rate in the developing countries keeps increasing. There is no time for the families to take care of their family educations. The information is stayed in the home village and there is no information exchange between different villages.

The resources are limited and the population keeps climbing, it facts the law of the jungle. People are fighting for foods, power and money. The war is never finished, because of the weakness of the education and people never understand each other. The distances of the developing countries and developed countries are getting larger and larger and this negative feedback loop will keep continuing without ending.

OLPC is now in deep trouble. It could not find a country enough to make an order for XO. So the project terminates, sadly.

Back to Main Page