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