On Mon, 3 Oct 2005, Richard Hoffbeck wrote:
> The business model used by Freeplay for their wind-up radios seems like
> a good fit. They figured they cost around $50 a piece for the units so
> they sold them at retail in the UK for $100 and used the profit to
> provide free radios to villages in southern Africa. I could see paying
> $200 for one of these if I knew that some kid in the developing or third
> world got one as well.

  Funny, one of the people behind the project thought of that model, too:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050929-5362.html

  Seems like a fine idea to me.  Lots of people would gladly fork over 
$200 for a laptop.
  If nothing else, though, don't underestimate the value of tax write-offs 
to big companies.  They might be able to get the components even cheaper.

> But I also question the ability to get the price down to $100.
> Supposedly the deal that Apple cut with Samsung for the flash memory in
> the Nano was about $40/GB and then there's the cost of the chipsets for
> the cell and 802.11b connectivity. Even if they can get a $12 display,
> it seems real hard to hit $100 even if you want to build 15M of them.

  I seem to recall seeing the price tag for the display being $35 (from 
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/).  So, they'd either have to get the other 
components dirt-cheap, or subsidize through other means.

      Jima