The first $100 laptop PCs for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program will roll off production lines by the end of this year, and mass production will start in the first quarter of 2007, Quanta Computer said Tuesday. The Taiwanese company, the largest contract notebook PC manufacturer in the world, had previously estimated it would begin mass production of the low-cost laptops in the second quarter of next year.
The company expects to ship 5 million to 10 million of the laptops next year, and said orders to Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, and Thailand have already been confirmed.