So, Mary Lou Jepsen leaves her position as OLPC project CTO. What does she end up doing? Starting up another, cheaper laptop project. Laptops for US$75 - now that’s ambitious.

Jepsen left OLPC just two weeks ago but company Pixel Qi is already planning to leverage on OLPC technology. NYT reported Jepsen  e-mailing IDG News Service stating the cause of her departure - “to commercialize technologies she invented with OLPC”. She may well be legally able to, what with her name listed in one patent (a low-power display system) and perhaps others.

In her email, Jepsen also wrote “Spinning out from OLPC enables the development of a new machine, beyond the XO [laptop], while leveraging a larger market for new technologies”.

Pixel Qi will be working with OLPC even if Jepsen isn’t, selling them products at cost but to commercial organizations at a profit.

What does this hold for the computing world? Laptops, despite their steadily lowering prices, are still premium items in the developing world. What someone in the US pays for, for a laptop, is almost four times that in countries like Malaysia and even more in struggling economies in Africa and South Asia.

Though the OLPC has run into snags and problems, not to mention a barrage of criticism, the premise - to make technology affordable and accessible - is a worthy, though idealistic, aim. Should laptop makers be looking over their shoulders? Not quite yet but if a US$75 barebones laptop became a reality then I’d say all bets are off.

Related:

OLPC comes to America’s poor children in 2008

Intel walks out on OLPC, chooses to put its profits first

Negroponte unveils the new OLPC XO2

One XO laptop per child, but none for the general public

Children using OLPC laptop to view porn

Entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 4:42 am under Uncategorized.  Print This Post

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