The One Laptop per Child project hopes to lower the cost of its laptop for developing nations to $50 per unit by 2010, Nicholas Negroponte said in the opening keynote at the LinuxWorld conference in Boston. The first units are scheduled to ship in December this year or January next year at an estimated cost of $135 per unit. Technological advances are expected to bring down costs to $100 by 2008 and $50 by 2010, Negroponte told delegates.
The project is supported by the United Nations and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Negroponte heads up the Media Lab. It hopes to ship 5 to 10 million units in 2007 to Argentinia, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Nigeria and Thailand. The One Laptop per Child project was kicked off in January 2005. But although the technology is the most visible, the project isn"t about creating low cost hardware, Negroponted said.