India Aims For World's 1st $10 Laptop Computer

India aims for world's first $10 laptop

Paul McDougall
Information Week

After refusing to introduce MIT luminary Nicholas Negroponte's Rs.4,226.98 ($100) portable computers, India is aiming for Rs.422.70 ($10) laptops. The project is being spearheaded by India's Ministry of Human Resource Development, with help from Semiconductor Complex, a government-sponsored designer and manufacturer of ICs.

Officials from those organisations are presently weighing system designs submitted by an engineering student from India's Vellore Institute of Technology and a researcher from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

The Times of India on May 4 reported that the efforts thus far have yielded designs for a laptop that would cost about Rs.1,986.68 ($47), while a Rs.422.70 ($10) system remains the ultimate goal.

Last year, Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child Organisation submitted a proposal to the Indian government under which the group would have worked to produce laptops for Indian students starting at Rs.4,226.98 ($100). Indian officials at the time criticised the proposal as insufficiently mature to be taken seriously and rejected it.

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