Taiwan's Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦) has been chosen as the original design manufacturer (ODM) for the ambitious US$100 laptop project called "One Laptop per Child (OLPC)," according to a news release posted on the Web site of the Delaware-based, non-profit organization under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab.
The decision was made yesterday after the OLPC's board of directors reviewed bids from several possible manufacturing companies, the statement read. The local media had earlier reported that the organization negotiated with Quanta, Compal Computer Inc (
The initiative to develop a US$100 laptop in a bid to revolutionize global education for children was first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, Media Lab chairman and co-founder, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.
"Any previous doubt that a very-low-cost laptop could be made for education in the developing world has just gone away," Negroponte said in the statement.
Quanta has already signed the contract with the US organization, company spokesman Tim Li (
However, since the whole project is still in the initial stage with a few technological issues that have to be resolved, such as model specifications, it is difficult to predict the exact time and quantity for mass production, Li said.
But OLPC said in the statement that Quanta has agreed to devote a significant part of Quanta Research Institute's engineering resources in the first half of next year, with a target of bringing the product to market in the fourth quarter of next year, the statement said.
Li said Quanta can benefit from the project by reinventing cost-saving production through the sharing of research and development resources with other leading global companies such as central processing unit maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc and other panel makers, which will ultimately be advantageous to their clients.
The project would not be a money-losing business that could impact the company's margin and profitability, as Quanta is a profitable organization and knows its responsibility to its shareholders, he added.
According to OLPC, the 5 million to 15 million laptops will be launched in seven culturally diverse countries, namely, China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria and Thailand.
The organization will allocate one million units in each of these countries, with an additional modest allocation of machines to seed developer communities in a number of other selected countries. A commercial version of the machine will be explored in parallel, it said in the statement.
The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on the basis of one laptop per child. These machines will be rugged, Linux-based, and so energy-efficient that hand-cranking alone can generate sufficient power for operation, it said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
The founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery, a court said yesterday, the latest blow for what was once the country’s leading developer. Evergrande’s rise was propelled by decades of rapid urbanization and rising living standards, but in 2020, its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation. The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors. Founder Xu Jiayin (許家印), 67, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was reportedly held by police in 2023, with Evergrande saying he had been subjected to
RSS