Can the tablet computer break the $100 mark? One Laptop Per Child thinks so.

The organization which aimed to get a laptop to every child in the world for under $100 says it now wants to beat that price with a tablet computer. It will come after two further revisions to the laptop model.

One Laptop Per Child has announced that it plans to release version 1.5 of the XO laptop next year for $200, doubling the speed and greatly expanding the memory. In 2011 it plans the 1.75 version, which will add a touchscreen facility.

The tablet edition will be version 3.0 (2.0 having been earmarked for a now abandoned project), released in 2012 and planned to retail for “well below $100.” As detailed by OLPC pioneer Nicholas Negroponte last month, the design will be a single block around the size of a sheet of paper and a quarter-inch thick, made of flexible and waterproof plastic with no holes. Negroponte even used the word “unbreakable”: if that proves to be the case with a product aimed at children, it will be more impressive than any price achievement.

While these points aren’t detailed in the OLPC press release, Endgadget reports that the device will use only half a watt of power and run an 8GHz processor (though the site speculates that must be an error and suggests 800MHz may be more plausible.)

Beating the $100 mark so quickly seems an unlikely goal. Just look at the controversial Crunchpad project which came nowhere close to a target of $200 for a web browser only device. When the project was shelved Arrington said the production costs would have been around $300, and his partners Fusion Garage are asking $499 for the only hardware to emerge from the scheme.

But it’s certainly a worthy project and with some people arguing that the original OLPC computer drove the entire netbook boom, the benefits could extend beyond schoolchildren.

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• One netbook per child out, One tablet per child in
• One XO laptop per child, but none for the general public
• Now it’s One Touchscreen Per Child
• OLPC asks laptop makers to copy its designs
• Amazon joins ‘Buy One, Give One Free’ laptop scheme