It’s no secret I’ve never been a fan of the OLPC project of Negroponte. It’s a typical syndrome of people sending the missionaries used teabags.
It’s not about what people in developing countries NEED, it’s what they WANT. withNigeria, Brazil, Argentina and Thailand each wanting to buy 1 million pieces of these toys. Remember Northrop Grunman? They also had funky designers and engineers dressed in black developing the F-20's. They nearly didn't sell any. Why? The US Defense Department flew F15s and F16s and that’s what the third world wanted, not the lame F20. Nothing different for laptops. The people in developing nations who you pretend to be wanting to help are just like you and me, just as valuable, just as smart and just as deserving of nothing less than an Apple MacBook Pro as you and I are using. Start there and work back !
You’ve all read by now on Intel stepping out. No more Cosmopolitans.
The day after, the OLPC foundation started screaming and kicking and Negroponte went through the roof. Alas, no media hype can save them, Intel is the hero of the pack. They realized just in time that their own approach of a low cost computer for educational use is the right one. That approach is called the Classmate PC. A concept on which the hugely popular (amongst geeks these days) Asus eee PC is based on. In Belgian; Bart De Waele, the CEO of a Belgian renowned Web development company decided to switch completely to Cloud computing on the Asus eee PC. He even has a Blog on it. That’s people in the developing world deserve: a tool which is also used by Belgian top CEOs (and their kids).
Now, why did the OLPC project die (it’s dead, believe me)?
Let us state it clearly: Brazil killed it and deserves a big applause for it. Nigeria didn’t really have the budget for it, Argentina was following Brazil and Thailand wasn’t really that committed. Meaning that Brazil was truly leading the pack. But hey, in a country like Brazil buying the first 150.000 OLPC laptops requires a bid. And boy, did Nicolas forgot that Brazil has complex custom duties, along with all the maintenance and warranties which brought the price of the XO to a whopping 387,39 US$ :
Declared value: US$ 100,00 (175,55 R$)
Import duty: 105,33 R$ (60%)
ICMS (state tax): 50,56 R$ (18%)
Customs Fee: 34,85 R$
Total end price: 366,29 R$
+ warranties: ?
+ maintenance: ?
For that price (680 R$) you can find new PC clones in Brazil. Admitted, they do need electricity (sic).
For 1.400 U$ you will be able to buy 7 PC locally build PC clones including the tables, marketed to Internet Cafes. True, there was an official statement on the morning that the auction began freeing all candidates of the taxes, but no one, neither the candidates or the auction judges, were informed about it. So what happened the last week of December? The winning model (Positivo) is locally build and 20 US$ cheaper than the XO. The model offered by Positivo is still unknown. But Intel has already congratulated them. Of course, it has an Intel chip in it (Intel has local chip factories in Brazil) and I bet we will all be surprised by the specs -a newer version of the Classmate PC with built-in camera and mesh networking; very close to the Asus eee PC setup. Currently it’s still unknown what will happen. Carnaval starts soon, so not much is to be expected the coming weeks. The judges of the auction still find the price high, which it is, but what is sure is that the XO is out. The rules of the Brazilian auction allow exclusive negotiations with Positivo Informatica. Conclusion:
Out: Negroponte, semi-intellectual designers, oldskool colonialism
In: Intel, pragmatism, free market, real cloud computing, Brazilian protectionism
And meanwhile I'm counting down for the day my Asus eee PC will arrive, the same one as the kids in Brazil will hopefully be using.
