Splitsville for One Laptop Per Child & Intel

So much for staying together for the sake of the children. The unusual collaboration between non-profit One Laptop Per Child and for-profit Intel has fallen apart. The “frail partnership...was undone last month in part by an Intel saleswoman: She tried to persuade a Peruvian official to drop the country’s commitment to buy a quarter-million of the organization’s laptops in favor of Intel PCs,” according to The New York Times.

“They played another dirty trick in Peru,” OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte told The Times. “It’s a little bit like McDonald’s competing with the World Food Program.”

In Peru, where One Laptop has begun shipping the first 40,000 PCs of a 270,000 system order, Isabelle Lama, an Intel saleswoman, tried to persuade Peru’s vice minister of education...that the Intel Classmate PC was a better choice for his primary school students. Unfortunately for Intel, the vice minister is a longtime acquaintance of Mr. Negroponte...The education minister took notes on his contacts with the Intel saleswoman and sent them to One Laptop officials... Until Intel surprised him by quitting on Thursday, Mr. Negroponte said he had still held out some hope that the relationship could be saved. The Intel XO was supposed to be introduced next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in keynote speeches to be made by Mr. Negroponte and Mr. Otellini, but the prototype will now be set aside.

Intel told the Wall Street Journal it was breaking up with OLPC and pulling its representative from the OLPC board. “We've reached a philosophical impasse with OLPC,” said an Intel spokesman. Intel favors offering many solutions to developing countries, not just the OLPC laptop, according to the spokesman. Intel markets a competitive product called the Classmate.

Negroponte remains optimistic that OLPC can sell two to thre million PCs this year. In its recent holiday promotion, the foundation raised $35 million and sold 167,000 units. But for Negroponte sometimes geography outranks the numbers. “If I can sell 1.5 million computers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ethiopia, I will feel a lot better than other sales we might make.”

Meanwhile over at CNET, Tom Krazit offers up a “teach a man to fish” approach. “Perhaps the best way to help developing countries get in on the technology revolution is to teach them how to design--not merely assemble--their own products, rather than coming to them from lofty perches in Cambridge and Santa Clara saying, ‘Don't worry, we know best.’”