Case Analysis of Marketing the “$100 Laptop”
The idea of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) was brought by Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory. Nicholas Negroponte created and developed a stir --“$100 Laptop”—in the personal computer industry. OLPC aims “to provide each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop” (www.one.laptop.org) Nicholas Negroponte has a vision to launch the education movement that would help alleviate poverty by connecting children in developing countries to the rest of the world. Therefore, he described OLPC “is an education project, not a laptop project” (Quelch, 2008).
Problems facing by OLPC
OLPC offers a laptop which is low power requirement, preventing water or sand or dirt damage, open source software, unique interface, and possibility for solar power and hand-crank powering lost cost (Quelch, 2008). These terms for an innovative, unique laptop seem bound for success (Davison, 2008). The $100 laptop should be experiencing growth in developing countries. However, some developing countries are reluctant to develop OLPC laptop, and some have cancelled planned purchases (Kraemer, Dedrick & Sharma, 2009). Meanwhile, the OLPC organization (www. olpc.com) struggles with key staff defections, budget cuts, mission disillusionment, high cost of OLPC laptop, difficult to sell to developing countries and unexpected aggressive competitors’ threats. These obstacles faced by OLPC indicate OLPC might not provide a new tool for children in developing countries and cannot profitably reach millions of poor children in developing countries. Here, we have to ask some questions: Is the vision still viable? How can OLPC sell 5 million laptops to developing countries? How can they overcome the design and cost challenges? How do they effectively deal with competitors’ similar products?
The major problems faced