Here's the official press release from Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child
initiative regarding the manufacturing partnership with Taiwan's Quanta.
-andy
Quanta Computer Inc. to Manufacture $100 Laptop
December 13, 2005—Cambridge, Massachusetts—The One Laptop per Child
(OLPC) board of directors today announced that Quanta Computer Inc. of
Taiwan was chosen as the original design manufacturer (ODM) for the $100
laptop project. The decision was made after the board reviewed bids from
several possible manufacturing companies.
In announcing the selection of Quanta, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte
said, "Any previous doubt that a very-low-cost laptop could be made for
education in the developing world has just gone away." Quanta has agreed
to devote significant engineering resources from the Quanta Research
Institute (QRI) in Q1 and Q2, 2006, with a target of bringing the
product to market in Q4. The launch of 5-15 million units will be both
in large-scale pilot projects in seven culturally diverse countries
(China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand), with
one million units in each of these countries, and an additional modest
allocation of machines to seed developer communities in a number of
other selected countries. A commercial version of the machine will be
explored in parallel.
"Quanta would like to contribute its industry-leading laptop
technologies to the future success of the project, in hope of affording
children worldwide with opportunities not only to close the 'digital
divide,' but also to bridge the 'knowledge divide.' This project
signifies a new stage and scale for the laptop industry by including
those children never before considered to be laptop users," said Quanta
founder and chairman, Barry Lam.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a Delaware-based, non-profit organization
created by Nicholas Negroponte and other faculty members from the MIT
Media Lab to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are
sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to
knowledge and modern forms of education. The laptops will be sold to
governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of one laptop
per child. These machines will be rugged, Linux-based, and so energy
efficient that hand-cranking alone can generate sufficient power for
operation. Mesh networking will give many machines Internet access from
one connection. The pricing goal will start near $100 and then steadily
decrease. The corporate members are Advanced Micro Devices (AMD),
Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, Nortel, and Red Hat.
Quanta Computer Inc. was founded in 1988 in Taiwan. With over US $10
billion in sales, the company is a leading provider of technology
products and solutions to Fortune 500 companies, including Dell, HP, and
IBM. Quanta has the distinction of being the world's largest
manufacturer of laptop PCs. The company also provides a full array of
mobile phones, LCD TVs, and servers and storage products.
With dedication to technological innovation and education, Chairman
Barry Lam launched a new US $200 million R&D center, Quanta R&D Complex
(QRDC), in Taiwan. The facility, which opened in Q3 of 2005, has 2.2
million square feet of floor space, and the capacity to house up to
7,000 engineers.
For more information about Quanta, visit http://www.quantatw.com
To learn about the $100 Laptop, visit http://laptop.media.mit.edu
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-----------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldivide.net
http://katrina05.blogspot.com
Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com
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