Chip-maker Intel "should be ashamed of itself" for efforts to undermine the USD 100 laptop initiative, according to its founder Nicholas Negroponte. He accused Intel of selling its own cut-price laptop - the Classmate - below cost to drive him out of markets. Professor Negroponte, who aims to distribute millions of laptops to kids in developing countries, said Intel had hurt his mission "enormously".
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Member since:2005-11-10
OLPC is a non profit, why would they be thinking of "Market" They are thinking of helping people. But helping people is not free.
Intel is ONLY thinking in terms of market share (Since they will loose money at first to keep OLPC from growing)
That is the problem here. If OLPC was a for profit business and this was straight compitition then that is fine.
But OLPC is non profit and Intel is just doing this for market share. And we know this because as shown on the show last night Intel's marketing documentation compares their product to the OLPC to show their product it better.
If Intel was doing it for the same reason that OLPC was then why put down OLPC?
Edited 2007-05-21 17:40
Member since:2007-02-11
OLPC is a non profit, why would they be thinking of "Market" They are thinking of helping people. But helping people is not free.
Intel is ONLY thinking in terms of market share (Since they will loose money at first to keep OLPC from growing)
OLPC is non-profit, but I doubt AMD is also non-profit. AMD will probably get *some* revenue -- just like everyone else involved in OLPC (no chip maker will do charity acts that involve hundreds of millions of chips without some profit).
Anyone else selling cheap laptops means less revenue for anyone behind OLPC and a good chance of dumping the whole deal.
Even if the purpose is noble and all, there's still a hefty marketing behind it. No company, let alone AMD or Intel or Microsoft, does any acts of charity without a good profit.
Member since:2005-07-24
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That is the problem here. If OLPC was a for profit business and this was straight compitition then that is fine.
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I just want to emphasize that the issue is dumping and not nonprofit vs for-profit.
Sure, I like OLPC better because they are non-profit. Not to mention the fact that they were the ones with the vision to do all this in the first place.
But the problem here is that Intel plans to use its deep pockets to dump product at well below cost with the intent of eliminating competition, in order to benefit big time in the absence of that competition by raising prices later. (Even a non-profit needs revenue or they go under.) These pilot markets that OLPC so desperately needs are just the tip of the iceberg.
Intel wants to sell the tip at below cost so that they can sell the rest of it at retail, even if the kids have to share the one-laptop-per-three-children product they plan to sell in the future, once OLPC is out of the way.
Member since:2007-01-20
Member since:
2007-01-20
So? At the best, he took a risk so they didn't have to. That's all sunk (as in cost) now and doesn't have anything to do with supposed taking advantage of the potential market.