[Olpc-open] Sales

[Edward Cherlin]

On June 5, 2008, 5:00PM EST, in article
One Laptop Meets Big Business
The big idea of giving PCs to poor children has been challenged by
educators and business. Here, follow the misadventures of One Laptop
per Child
Steve Hamm and Geri Smith of Business Week (With Nandini Lakshman in
Mumbai) wrote:

"Now pilots are running in 20 countries, distribution has begun in
two, and about 370,000 laptops have been shipped...During the week of
May 18, Negroponte ran a four-day conference in Cambridge that brought
together education and tech leaders from 44 countries. About 500,000
orders were placed, bringing the total to 750,000 outstanding orders."

So is that 750K total, or 370K shipped and 750K _more_ on order,
totaling 1.12M? Or what? Why doesn't management tell the community
anything about sales figures?

If the latter, a press release for the first million seems to be in
order. Even if not, a press release for .5M orders would be
appropriate. In any case, the unseemly hand-wringing over the alleged
"failure" of a program approaching $200 million in revenue in the
first year is the shoddiest kind of reporting.

-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay