NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, April 4, 2005

The laptops would be mass-produced in orders of no smaller than 1 million units and bought by governments, which would distribute them.
Ambitious projects to bridge the digital divide in the developing world at low cost have had a shaky track record. Perhaps the best example is the Simputer, a $220 handheld device developed by Indian scientists in 2001 that only last year became available and isn’t selling well.
But Negroponte and MIT colleagues Joe Jacobson and Seymour Papert aren’t deterred.
For one, three corporate partners have committed an initial $2 million apiece to the initiative and pledged to serve as suppliers for the “one laptop per child’’ project: Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which will bring expertise in processors; “Do No Evil’’ search engine king Google; and News Corp., Rupert Murdoch’s media company with global satellite capabilities.
Story found here.