Marketing the $100 Laptop

The idea of “One Laptop Per Child” that was thought up by Negroponte was designed to offer essentially a $100 Laptop to needy children around the world to promote the use of technology in the classroom and home as an educational tool. Negroponte believed that children around the world who privileged enough to own or even access a computer were at a severe disadvantage when it came to education.

The first challenge that the OLPC faced was how to design and mass-produce the $100 laptop. The issues that the design team faced was rooted in the conditions faced in the countries that the laptop would be used, not only environmental conditions but also resource availability such as electricity and Internet coverage. Another challenge that the OLPC faced was how to convince the governments that this was the “best investment” to not only improve the education in their country but also assist in their fight against poverty.

With regards to the design issues and ability to make the idea a reality I think they have done a great job. They have met all the design needs of the involved countries and sourced a producer that matches the demands while offering effective pricing. In my opinion I think they have done a fair job in showing the true benefits that these laptops can provide to communities that are not privileged enough to have computers and internet in every household. The strategic placements in come communities to get the attention of the governments was a great idea like in Uruguay but I believe they should have donated more to create a bigger hype and better opinion of in the news.

The difficulties with marketing the OLPC to governments were based on government’s agenda matched by their budgets. What I mean by this is that if a government decides to invest a certain proportion of their budget to the OLPC then it has to be cut from some other department, which many governments could not justify. The spending of millions on laptops for children over a health program or more teachers for classrooms was a debate faced by all involved governments and created a major hurdle for OLPC to overcome.

In my opinion there are two strategic options that OLPC could undertake, the first option would be to go ahead and get project underway without the firm commitments in an attempt to grab market share through first mover advantage created by being the only sub $200 laptop and then continue to market it to governments by showing benefits through real results. The other strategic option would be to join up with one of the currently successful companies to create a unified product such as the Lenovo OLPC using combined expertise and solid customer base and distribution network to bring down overall costs and make the $100 laptop a reality out of the gates.