OLPC Vs Intel Laptops: Diagnosis of a Breakup

In January of 2005, Nicholas Negroponte had an idea. Put rugged inexpensive laptops in the hands of children in developing countries. Give them access to each other and information from the internet and they will grow up more educated and better suited to help their nation overcome its obstacles. Key to success would be in securing bulk orders from individual country's education ministers rather than the traditional route of selling to a variety of school districts within a country.

Taking a leave of absence from his posts as director of the MIT media Lab and Professor of Media Technologies, Mr. Negroponte, founded the non-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation to institute his grand idea. Knowing he could not hope to accomplish this lofty goal alone, Negroponte sought support from a friend at chip manufacturer AMD, the response "Count us in, and we would be delighted to take a lead role here." In short order technology giant Google and media conglomerate News Corp joined the foundation, followed by Red Hat with a pledge to provide the operating system.

The mission still had a host of technological hurdles to overcome. The price of the cheapest laptops at the time were around $500, a long way from the proposed $100 target. In addition, they were anything but rugged, some might even describe them as extremely fragile, in any case none were ready for the conditions and climates the OLPC laptops were expected to endure.

A team of dedicated and skilled engineers were brought together to come up with a fresh design that was inexpensive, rugged, interconnected and geared towards children. The result of this collaboration was the XO laptop. First introduced to the world, only 11 months after it conception, by UN Secretary Kofi Annan at the World Symposium on the Information Society. Modest hardware, by today's standards, with an innovative dual mode display and built in wireless mesh networking, the low power mechanically charged XO laptop was a technological marvel.

The little green machine garnered a slew of positive media attention, dubbing it the $100 laptop. Interest from heads of state from around the world rolled in to the foundation. The future looked bright indeed for the project.

Introducing the Classmate PC

All this attention was not to go unnoticed by two of the largest companies in the technology world. Microsoft and Intel, for years ignored the third world market that could not afford their goods. Suddenly there was talk of millions of low cost computers running open source software stuffed with a rival company's microchips. Something had to be done.

That something turned out to be a low cost Intel based Laptop running Microsoft Windows. Intel aggressively marketed their Classmate PC laptop to the same countries Negroponte had announce as showing interest in the XO. Intel touted the Classmate's faster processor and the ability to run Windows to heads of state as definite advantages over the XO, while playing down it's power inefficiency, shorter battery charge, fragility and higher cost.

Intel defended the aggressive marketing tactics as an effort to ensure that as many children as possible are served by the best possible hardware. Negroponte railed publicly and often that Intel was trying to sabotage his altruistic vision for purely profit based reasons.

A Truce

In July 2007, Intel announced they were joining the OLPC foundation pledging $18 million in funding and a faster Intel processor for newer XOs. At the time Will Swope, vice president and director of corporate affairs at Intel, had this to say "Our role here is one of how do we have the biggest impact on education and on children around the world?" Adding, "How could we make that more impactful and reach more children?" The answer, he said, was to join OLPC.

Delivering $6 Million to the project, with a promise of two more payments to come, the partnership appeared to be mutually beneficial and would see an end to the rivalry. Negroponte even seemed pleased and said "Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children."

It all falls apart

Still hearing from perspective OLPC customers that Intel sales reps were disparaging the XO, Negroponte challenged the Intel executives to ensure it stopped. Intel agreed, assuring Negroponte management would put a stop to it. If memos were sent, they were apparently ignored. What follows is an account by Oscar Becerra Tresierra, a long time friend Negroponte's, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Oscar Becerra Tresierra, general director for educational technology at Peru's Ministry of Education, says that after the country recently agreed to buy 272,500 OLPC laptops for primary-school students, an Intel sales representative tried "to scare us" by claiming the machines and their power adapters didn't work. "I don't feel very happy about it," he said. "We wouldn't like the project to fail because somebody is spreading gossip about the machines that doesn't turn out to be true."

This was in response to a request for a proposal for Classmate PCs for secondary schools. Instead, Intel's sales rep, Isabelle Lama, responded with a Classmate proposal for primary schools. "We told them this is a final decision, we are running the primary-grade project with the XO," adding "She wasn't very happy."

Unfortunately for Intel, Mr Tresierra kept notes on the conversation and forwarded them to the OLPC foundation.

Even with this latest blatant attempt at undermining the project, Negroponte held out hope that the partnership might survive. He asked Intel to stop promoting the Classmate in competition with the XO. Just one week before the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where a new Intel powered XO prototype was to be unveiled, Intel decided they would rather leave the foundation. With a surprise press conference, Intel announced their departure on January 3^rd. The reason given by Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy, "They wanted us to focus our support exclusively on the OLPC system." Negroponte reportedly heard the news while in a taxi.

The official response from the OLPC foundation can be best described as utter disappointment. Stating, "Intel was unwilling to work cooperatively with OLPC on software development. Over the entire six months it was a member of the association, Intel contributed nothing of value to OLPC: Intel never contributed in any way to our engineering efforts and failed to provide even a single line of code to the XO software efforts - even though Intel marketed its products as being able to run the XO software. The best Intel could offer in regards to an "Intel inside" XO laptop was one that would be more expensive and consume more power - exactly the opposite direction of OLPC's stated mandate and vision. "

Noting the proposed XO prototype that has now been scrapped, OLPC says "The best Intel could offer in regards to an "Intel inside" XO laptop was one that would be more expensive and consume more power - exactly the opposite direction of OLPC's stated mandate and vision. "

Summarizing the whole affair OLPC states, "Despite OLPC's best efforts to work things out with Intel and several warnings that their behavior was untenable, it is clear that Intel's heart has never been in working collaboratively as a part of OLPC. "

Given the evidence, I'd have to agree. Joining the OLPC foundation seemed the perfect way for Intel to keep Negroponte's public objections private. The OLPC foundation will continue trying to change the world, leaving Intel behind to try and sell laptops.

Sources:

David Kirkpatrick - Negroponte on Intel's $100 laptop pullout - CNNMoney
John Markoff - Intel Quits Effort to Get Computers to Children - New York Times
China Martens - Intel joins One Laptop Per Child initiative - InfoWorld
Steve Stecklow- Laptop-Project Founder Faults Intel - Wall Street Journal
Kenneth Li - Intel drops out of One Laptop Per Child program - Reuters
OLPC - Intel - OLPC: Official Response - OLPC Wiki