Here's an interesting and informal interview with Nicholas Negroponte on the cost of the XO from One Laptop Per Child. At about 3 minutes into the interview he says:
"And we will announce within the next few weeks a pretty major price change, downward. Yeah, we will lower the price, very significantly."
But this forthcoming price drop is apparently due to the change in nickel prices and the drop in the dollar. In fact, Negroponte puts forth the idea that the XO laptop has dropped in "4 year old dollars" from $188 to $120. I'm not sure I agree with his math, you need $188+ dollars, no matter their age, to buy a single XO. But you can't actually do that. You need to have $188,000 to buy at least 1,000 before OLPC will even look at you or your dollars.
It is still interesting to listen to his logic and think about what could be that "significant" drop in XO pricing.
Mmm, interesting comment indeed...
Personally I'd assume a significant price drop to mean anything more than 25%, bringing down the cost of one XO to ~$140.
Anyway, we should get some bets going along the lines of "how low can OLPC go?"! :-)
Negroponte is already hinting its $120, or less. So I am going with the ultimate number: $100 XO laptops.
But I think we need to impose one rule, no matter the price - this must be a real price now, not some future target price. We've all had enough dreaming.
How about actually selling them? Forget the friggin price for cripes sake. And who in the world buys 1000 at a time - obviously not enough to put a dent into it. They need to figure out how to pre-sell machines and then deliver them once a certain quantity is manufactured.
I agree with the previous poster.
It doesn't matter how much it costs if you cannot buy it.
As long as OLPC doesn't start selling them on normal sales channels, nothing will change.
Well, we can debate the advantages and disadvantages of individual sales until the end of time...
However imagine if Wayan's assumption were correct. An almost 50% price-cut would certainly enable more small pilots and deployments, since 1000 x $100 is quite a bit more affordable than 1000 x $188.