The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which developed the low-cost XO education laptop for developing countries, has revealed plans for its next-generation mobile computing device. The new system, which will have a clamshell form-factor with two 16:9 touch-screen displays and no hardware keyboard, is expected to sell for $75 per unit and will be available in 2010. That's the hope, at least. The reality is likely to be quite different, given the project's troubled history.

OLPC has suffered from a multitude of serious setbacks and has had difficulty managing the development and rollout of its XO laptop. The cost of the XO climbed to $188 from the initial target of $100 and OLPC complains that sales have been disappointingly slow. The organization attempted to sell XO units in North America through the Give 1 Get 1 program in order to offset some of the production costs, but the effort was undermined by serious shipping and deployment problems. The XO keyboard, which is said to be susceptible to hardware failure, has prompted a dubious patent infringement lawsuit by a Nigerian company.

The organization itself is also fracturing internally as key contributors take sides in a bitter dispute over the direction of the OLPC software platform. This battle has led to the departure of several important participants. OLPC's former security director lashed out at the organization last week and revealed that it has absolutely no deployment infrastructure in place at all to facilitate the XO rollout.

Those problems will hopefully be worked out by the time OLPC 2.0 is launched. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte says that the clamshell design of the new laptop is modeled after a book. It will be smaller and lighter than the XO and can also be opened up completely flat to provide a single continuous touch-screen surface. Like the XO, it will use former OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen's unique dual-mode display which is readable under direct sunlight. Jepsen left OLPC earlier this year to found her own company with the intention of commercializing the display technology. She indicated at the time that she was working with OLPC on a new project—a $75 laptop. The new OLPC hardware model announced today is likely what she was referring to.

Negroponte's announcement of a next-generation product seems extremely premature in the face of all of the severe problems faced by OLPC and its current product. Without proper deployment infrastructure to handle the XO, there's a very real question of whether the organization will last long enough to push out a second product.

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