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Laptop for all?Laptop for all?Posted May 30, 2006 16:17 UTC (Tue) by kh (subscriber, #19413)In reply to: Laptop for all? by mattdm Parent article: OLPC hardware details posted
With all the fights they have been having with manfacturers with the promise to sell them to only a very limited market, I wonder what problems they would face if they stated they were going to offer the thing to anyone. I think you would at least see proxy (e.g. SCO) lawsuits. This may commodize a number of markets away from some very large companies - and they don't seem too happy.
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Laptop for all? Posted May 30, 2006 19:05 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Fortunately, the corporations have not yet managed to create a world where selling a cheaper product is a legal offense. Some countries (including the US) have "anti-dumping" laws, meaning that you can't deliberately sell a product at a loss just to put your competitor out of business, and sometimes these laws are abused.The key enabler to the $100 laptop is a $0 cost for the operating system; Microsoft currently charges large manufacturers like Dell and HP about $50. A $200 laptop in a retail store is not possible if Microsoft has to be paid $50 for the Windows license. The retailer is going to need a 40% markup, minimum, to pay the employees and the rent and make some profit, maybe more, and the manufacturer needs a profit, plus some overhead to allow for replacement of defective machines. In a few years, Microsoft is either going to have to settle for $20 instead of $50 on low-end machines or lose market share.
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