India Hopes to Make $10 Laptops a Reality

sas-dot writes "We all know Nicholas Negroponte's $100 OLPC. India, which was a potential market, rejected it. India's Human Resources Development ministry's idea to make laptops at $10 is firmly taking shape with two designs already in and public sector undertaking Semiconductor Complex evincing interest to be a part of the project. So far, the cost of one laptop, after factoring in labor charges, is coming to $47 but the ministry feels the price will come down dramatically considering the fact that the demand would be for one million laptops."

side note:

[Hanzie]

I've always thought having a monitor that could detach to be stand-alone or attach with a standard mount would greatly help consumers. It wouldn't be too good for the manufacturers, who generally charge more for a replacement screen than a newer laptop would cost.

With these gov't subsidized deals, though, I'm hopeful.

It should help out by decreasing replacement costs (swap the main unit OR the screen, not both).

Meanwhile, I can't wait to see these Indian cheapies on eBay!

hanzie.

Re:I must be living in a story book..

[kallu_be]

I don't think it will happen anytime soon. Scientific calculators in India cost around 600RS(15$). How come a child laptop cost 10$.

10 dollar laptop, eh?

[Sneakernets]

I hope these could be sold in the states if they are made, lots of kids in the poorer southern states could benefit. Hell, anyone could benefit from a low cost multipurpose laptop!

I bought a TI extensa for $25 and it's 100 MHz with 8 MB RAM and it lasted me through high school, and part of college (the DC jack broke and my wireless PC card broke too :( )


If they could make this low cost laptop like the TI Extensa 710 (with a faster clock and more RAM of course) I think we'd find a low-cost solution. Perhaps some old technology chips could be made again for a low cost.

No info to be found...

[evilviper]

There is absolutely no information to be found here... Without some specs for the thing, they might as well say they're coming up with a toaster...

If all you want is an digital text reader and work processor, yeah, you can do it for $10, easily enough. It's not going to compete in the same league as the OLPC, though.

Adding a color screen drives prices through the roof. Adding wifi will be more expensive. Adding USB and a decent amount of Flash storage will make it more expensive... etc.

I've argued several times before that the OLPC could do it's job just fine with far lower spec than even what it originally had, but I doubt they've got it right this time, at a price of just $10, and I'm extremely sure a device that cheap can't reasonably even be called a "Laptop" to begin with.

Re:I must be living in a story book..

[JavaIsGreat]

Which Calculator, CASIO is Japanese company. Local calculators are not costly.

As if! Look at the breakdown costs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the most basic ASIC chips cost at least $1ea in mass production... and a laptop has dozens of them.

Then you have to include into the price of each laptop:
- shipping/freight
- raw materials
- PCB production
- assembly/plant equipment
- labour (oh wait, this is India!)
- patent fees (as if!)

Remember Simputer

[gopla]

Avery body here is aware of a project called Simputer, that was being run by IISc, Bangalore some 5 years ago. That project also had aim of providing computer at about Rs 5000 (@100 USD at rough rate of 50 Rs/USD). It turned out to be a huge failure.

This seems to be another vapour ware project, whose main aim is to extract government money. A present even simple mouse costs more than Rs. 500.

There is a saying in Sanskrit vachanesu kim dardratam . Why should you act as poor if only thing you have to do is to make promise. You can promise Rs 5.0 laptop, if you know that nobody is going to held you accountable at end of 5 year project and spending million dollar, and delivering nothing.

Gopla

Just Dollar arbitrage

[ghoul]

Given the rate at which the dollar is falling and the time it takes to complete govt projects in India by the time it is finished Rs 1600 will be worth more than 100 dollar. They can still claim to make a Rs 1600 laptop but it would actually be a 100 dollar laptop not a 10 dollar laptop. On the flip side the Chinese flat screen Tvs we get for 400 dollars nowadays will cost us 4000 dollars at Walmart

completely impossible

[N3wsByt3]

There is NO WAY in which a laptop can cost only $10, unless it is heavily subsidised by the state. Idian labour is cheap, but not THAT cheap (it's more expensive then china, for instance). Mass production will make things cheaper, but not THAT much cheaper (the raw materials and manufacturing still has a bottom price, after all).

If they're ever going to create something that goes below the $20 it would be amazing enough, but even then it would be a (technological) marginal device and completely out of the league with even the OLPC. Maybe some sort of ultra-cheap non-expandable motherboard with an integrated 386-like CPU, a solid-state HD of 128MB and with a 3 inch screen, or something, just to run a simplified Word application and a lynx-based browser.

Re:completely impossible

[Antique Geekmeister]

Yeah, the power supplies for a typical laptop alone cost at least $5, even in amazing bulk. The extremely flexible and robust design of the OLPC project that can be mechanically powered instead of needing power grid or batteries is a big chunk of its cost. Bulk manufacturing helps lower prices, but you still have to pay for the keyboard components and the screen and CPU and the power supplies.

Re:As an Indian IT person,

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a publicity stunt where a politician is trying to ride on the wave of IT success in India.
Most people (being technology ignorant) will never follow up to check if this project ever materialized and in a year, pretty much the rest will forget that this project "got dropped". So the politician will stand to win since 99% of the people will just remember that this minister attempted something cool (since they won't even know that it was impossible to begin with).

Biogas maybe?

[ghoul]

Most Indian villages which dont have grid power , have either solar , wind or most commonly biogas plants. As cows are there in most villages its easy to get methane from cow dung and generators running on methane

You can actually measure this.

[Grendel Drago]

Here's a table (sortable, now!) which ranks nations by level of income inequality [wikipedia.org]; this isn't a perfect metric, since (for instance) wealth inequality tends to be far more dramatic, and a nation with high inequality but a high minimum standard of living may have fewer people in misery than a nation with low inequality, but a low average standard of living.

That said, Bolivia leads the "richest 10%/poorest 10% ratio" category, at 168.1:1 (USA: 15.9:1); Sierra Leone leads "richest 20%/poorest 20% ratio" at 57.6:1 (USA: 8.4:1); Namibia has the highest Gini coefficient [wikipedia.org], 74.3 as calculated by the UN, 70.7 by the CIA (USA: 40.8, 45). Of course, some of this data goes back to 1989, so take it with a grain of salt. The least unequal countries based on these metrics are, respectively, Azerbaijan (3.3), Azerbaijan (2.6) and Denmark (24.7, 23.2).

There's also a measure of the proportion of the population living in poverty [wikipedia.org], both in absolute (in Nigeria, about 90% of the population lives on under $2 a day) and relative (in Liberia, 80% of the population is below the poverty line) terms.

Re:I must be living in a story book..

[snottgoblin]

There are two sides to consider. The quality of the product for the consumer (the kids in this case) vs protecting and fostering local businesses. India was a socialist country for the first 50 odd years after independence and the level of protectionism exercised hardly fostered any innovation but the consumers had to put up with lesser quality products. Just as in the case of an individual you do not improve unless you compete against those better than you. Which is what the government is now doing slowly allowing global businesses within India at the same time allowing local businesses the time to adapt and stand up to the competition.

I just hope the government does not compromise on the quality of the end product so as to boast off a $10 computer. Given that most public schools in India probably do not have even a single computer that the kids could use, it would probably be wise to try to start out small and aim to have at least one computer per school in the short term than spew out sound bytes that probably may never take shape.

Re:I must be living in a story book..

[DragonWriter]

You've clearly never left the US. We've got it pretty good here.

On the issue being discussed, wealth inequality, that's debatable—it might be true if your standards for "pretty good" are really generous. Considering only the three countries being discussed in this strand of the conversation, the United States is significantly worse than India by most measures of inequality (richest 10%:poorest 10%, richest 20%:poorest 20%, Gini index, etc.), though also much better than Brazil by the same measures. The US has worse inequality than almost any other place in the developed world (though the UK is close), and worse also than lots of places in the developing world.