"One Laptop Per Child" Founder Slams Intel
Nicholas Negroponte, founder of a nonprofit initiative to sell low-cost laptops to developing countries, lashed out at Intel Corp., which he accused of trying to undermine the project by selling its own machines in the same markets even after joining the project's board in July.
Responding to the giant chipmaker's announcement Thursday that it was severing ties with the One Laptop Per Child project, Mr. Negroponte said, "They've been doing damage in the marketplace with countries since the day we started. And after we made peace with them, they did more damage."
The two sides had been feuding over Intel's aggressive marketing of the Classmate, a low-cost laptop of its own design, in many of the same countries the nonprofit had been targeting for its own device. That machine, called the XO, uses a microprocessor from Intel's chief competitor, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. In an interview, Mr. Negroponte accused Intel of trying to talk countries like Peru out of buying the OLPC machine, which recently began shipping.
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Wall Street Journal | STEVE STECKLOW | January 4, 2008 04:53 PM