Intel to Quit the OLPC Charity Initiative

Intel has just put an end to its relationship with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, Nicholas Negroponte's charity action to manufacture and deliver low-cost notebooks to students in developing countries. This marks the end of a very tensioned relationship between the participants.

The partnership between Intel and the OLPC Foundation could not have lasted longer, as the sub-notebooks used chips manufactured by AMD - Intel's rival. Intel's reaction to the project itself was mere ridicule. It was completely natural for Intel to react allergically to a product using competitors' parts. Moreover, the XO notebook was a direct competitor to Intel's own low-cost notebook, the Classmate PC, which would sell at a slightly higher price, but includes hardware that makes it more of a conventional laptop that an electronic "abacus".

Professor Negroponte's reaction was extremely acid and condemned Intel on these grounds, saying that the company should be "ashamed of itself". The professor did not like the Intel competition, because the company intended to sell the Classmate on the same markets as the XO notebooks. On the other side, Intel believes in competition, and claimed that the advantage of choice primes the cost benefits.

Things went friendly in July 2007, when Intel adhered to the OLPC Foundation and joined the board of chairmen. The company even offered to design a new architecture for the XO notebook, and speculated upon the fact that their processors would be as good as AMD's. When their proposal was rejected by the OLPC initiative because of the price difference between Intel and AMD processors, Intel started promoting the Classmate PC in China.

The end was near for the partnership, and it only took a spark to release all the tension between the two parties. When Negroponte demanded that Intel drops its Classmate and focus on the XO sub-notebook, Intel called it quits. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said that the chip manufacturer was in a "philosophical impasse" with the OLPC initiative and that Intel will not terminate the Classmate PC project as it has "long believed there is no single solution to the needs of children in emerging and underdeveloped markets."