One Laptop per Child: Built for failure

What did Nicholas Negroponte expect? His One Laptop Per Child initiative, launched in 2005, had all the right ideals but the wrong strategy.

The idea of building a $100 laptop for children in developing nations was laudable, but isolating big players such as Intel and Microsoft rather than signing them up to make it happen was a critical mistake.

In a Wall Street Journal story today, Negroponte complained about competition from Intel and Microsoft with the introduction of the Classmate. He should have seen it coming.

As PC sales peak in the U.S. and Europe, students in developing nations are the future for Microsoft, Intel, and other market leaders. Did Negroponte really expect them to stand idly by while he introduced a product that would marginalize them?

The failure of his program is the focus of the Journal story, aptly titled A little laptop with big ambitions: How a computer for the poor got stomped by the tech giants (subscription required).

Negroponte's leanings toward open source and second tier processor vendor AMD may make sense in academic circles, but not when you're selling end user devices that threaten the long-term dominance of the market leaders.

Of course the market leaders saw the nonprofit effort as a competitive challenge. While the assumption that one couldn't make a $100 laptop using Intel and Microsoft products may have been true, in the end neither could the One Laptop Project. Meanwhile, Intel's competing product came damned close to what the consortium could offer.

The world runs on Windows. Why would developing nations want their students learning on a laptop designed around an operating system that few use on personal computers in the business world? As far as ease of use goes, even those who do pass over Windows typically go to the Mac OS, not Linux. For students, ease of use counts.

What's more, as Negroponte readily admits, he's not a businessman. Even the best businesses in the world have a hard time entering established markets against entrenched competitors with huge R&D budgets and marketing operations. You simply never catch up.

One good thing has come of this: The initiative has focused the attention of Intel and Microsoft on low-cost laptops as never before. And while Intel's addition to the board of directors at the One Laptop Project in July may seem like a sellout to some, its addition is likely to help Negroponte attain his ultimate goal - inexpensive, affordable laptops for students in the world's poorest nations.

There's nothing wrong with that.