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OLPC: what went wrong?

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 13 Nov 2009 at 11:51

When Nicholas Negroponte announced in 2005 that he intended to put a $100 laptop into the hands of the poorest children on the planet, he couldn’t have imagined the difficulties that lay ahead.

Critics started throwing stones before the ink had dried on the first blueprints, arguing that putting laptops into the hands of Third-World children was like trying to sell Rolexes to beggars.

Negroponte remained bullish, telling detractors this was “an education project, not a laptop project”, and predicted sales of five million in 2007. Yet, by the start of 2009 sales of the XO laptop had failed to reach even 1.5 million, forcing the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) foundation to shed half of its staff.

Goodwill for the project had also been eroded by Negroponte’s mud-slinging, which saw him accuse Intel of “spoiling the market” by introducing its Classmate PC and label even his own colleagues as “terrorists.” By its own criteria the project has failed, but why?

The chief executive of OLPC Europe believes the five-million pound target is a red herring. “It’s not very pleasant not reaching those targets, and although our prospects are really great, we have high ambitions – but this isn’t the time for high ambitions,” Walter de Brouwer told PC Pro.

We have 1.4 million laptops out there, but it doesn’t really mean anything when there’s hundreds of millions of children who need them

“We have 1.4 million laptops out there, but it doesn’t really mean anything when there’s hundreds of millions of children who need them. These are difficult times, but we are doing okay.”

According to de Brouwer, the heart of OLPC’s troubles was a mixture of bad timing and poor strategy. It assumed developing countries such as Brazil, India and China would weigh in with large orders, but quickly discovered they weren’t interested in taking “Western handouts”, especially while they were trying to grow their own computing industries.

At the other end of the scale, countries such as Peru and Uganda were interested, but as the recession deepened they found themselves without the cash to fulfil their orders.

With targeted countries turning their noses up at the XO, Negroponte began offering the iconic green laptop to Western customers under the condition they bought a second unit for a child in a developing country.

The Give One Get One scheme raked in $37 million in 2006, despite severe shortages, but when the company tried it again with Amazon.com in 2008, it raked in only $2.5 million.

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User comments

Wouldn't it be more sensible to sort out clean water and proper food distribution before giving people laptops? Forgive my cynicism but the biggest hindrance to the third world is corruption and ignorance.

By bubbles16 on 13 Nov 2009

Intel is to blame here - they screwed this up!

Intel worked briefly with OLPC and split when they couldn't remove AMD from the project. Intel muscled into the same markets where OLPC was being distributed and used the same underhand techniques as they had done previously with AMD, so they could launch their classmate to rival any AMD machine.

@bubbles TBH Giving these people the chance to find out and teach themselves from the internet would be far cheaper than sorting out the water and food - we've tried that approach for generations and it hasn't worked. This approach is to simply give them an educational understanding of how things are done so they can build and do what, how and when ever they want.

By nicomo on 13 Nov 2009

The big problem with this whole project is that you had too many people wading in from stupid angles who had little understanding of the needs of the end user. You had people blundering treating a third world educational tool as if it were a developed world consumer product, trying to get as many features as possible on to what was supposed ot be a basic machine. They wanted a faster proccessor, more hard disc space, and there were even idiots suggesting that it should play HD movies on it. When what was really needed was a low spec machine that could take the place of a text book and which would run on next to no batteries.

The whole thing finally fell apart when the big name companies realized that the end product wouldn't sell well to Western consumers, whom they were hoping would turn a non-profit product into a money spinner.

By Perfectblue97 on 13 Nov 2009

Five what?

Five million pound target? Five million machines, I guess you mean.

And yes, I agree with the first poster. Let's sort out clean water, food, corruption (sleaze, surely?) and healthcare before we give them laptops.

By Grace_Quirrel on 13 Nov 2009

OLPC - It is already flawed

The truth is that the concept behind OLPC -One Laptop Per Child is that, amongst other things, not every child will need, or should have a laptop. What about a family PC or sharing, or even my favourite, those who want a laptop can get themselves one, and those in poorer countries, well, why do they even need laptops now.

Trust me,
What happened to desktops anyway?

By AfCurtis on 13 Nov 2009

Are ALL large IT projects doomed to failure?

Think how many government IT projects in the UK turn out to be une oreille du cochon. Usually because the intended users are not properly consulted before, the requirements definitions turn out to have movable goalposts, and there are too many vested interests to reconcile. One-per-Desk, sorry, One Laptop per Child seems to have been cast in the same mould...

By JohnGray7581 on 14 Nov 2009

almost too inaccurate to comment

OLPC is one of the most successful projects in computers and learning, with over 1.2M laptops in the hands of kids in 31 countries and 19 languages. 800,000 headed their way. http://www.flickr.com/photos/olpc/3145038187/
You can thank us for the downward price pressure on the laptop industry, not to mention the fact that OLPC is the birthplace of the Netbook, soon to be 30% of the world market. Instead, you quote an employee that was dismissed for bad performance (Ivan). When you ask if kids should get "connected laptops" substitute the word "education" and you will never ask that silly question again. When we go to places like Afghanistan, Haiti and most recently Gaza, the project is about hope, as well. OLPC has changed the lives of so many. A shame you cannot look beyond sales, which are meaningless to us (we do not take a penny of nmargin), as we are a non-profit, humanistarian program. Imagine if I had said in 2005 that we were doing 100,000 or 500,000 laptops. It would not have created any attention nor the subsequent disruption nor real change. Look deeper next time.

NN

By NicholasNegroponte on 15 Nov 2009