Quanta Computer Inc. to Manufacture $100 Laptop

Business Wire, Dec 13, 2005

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) board of directors today announced that Quanta Computer Inc. of Taiwan was chosen as the original design manufacturer (ODM) for the $100 laptop project. The decision was made after the board reviewed bids from several possible manufacturing companies.

In announcing the selection of Quanta, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said, "Any previous doubt that a very-low-cost laptop could be made for education in the developing world has just gone away." Quanta has agreed to devote significant engineering resources from the Quanta Research Institute (QRI) in Q1 and Q2, 2006, with a target of bringing the product to market in Q4. The launch of 5-15 million units will be both in large-scale pilot projects in seven culturally diverse countries (China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand), with one million units in each of these countries, and 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.

"Quanta would like to contribute its industry-leading laptop technologies to the future success of the project, in hope of affording children worldwide with opportunities not only to close the 'digital divide,' but also to bridge the 'knowledge divide.' This project signifies a new stage and scale for the laptop industry by including those children never before considered to be laptop users," said Quanta founder and chairman, Barry Lam.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a Delaware-based, non-profit organization created by Nicholas Negroponte and other faculty members from the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a 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. Mesh networking will give many machines Internet access from one connection. The pricing goal will start near $100 and then steadily decrease. The corporate members are Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, Nortel, and Red Hat.

Quanta Computer Inc. was founded in 1988 in Taiwan. With over US $10 billion in sales, the company is a leading provider of technology products and solutions to Fortune 500 companies, including Dell, HP, and IBM. Quanta has the distinction of being the world's largest manufacturer of laptop PCs. The company also provides a full array of mobile phones, LCD TVs, and servers and storage products.

With dedication to technological innovation and education, Chairman Barry Lam launched a new US $200 million R&D center, Quanta R&D Complex (QRDC), in Taiwan. The facility, which opened in Q3 of 2005, has 2.2 million square feet of floor space, and the capacity to house up to 7,000 engineers.

For more information about Quanta, visit http://www.quantatw.com

To learn about the $100 Laptop, visit http://laptop.media.mit.edu