The $100 laptop

[Joseph Sinclair]

Why develop software for a small segment of the PC market that has no money when you can develop for the 650 million PC systems owned by people with disposable income, and still have that same software run on the smaller segment?  You're still assuming this will become a mass-market system.  It will not.
The days of developing software for a small subset of the PC market are pretty much over.  There are still a very few applications where it makes sense, but I don't believe this system will ever be used by people who could afford that type of vertical market app.

BTW, I don't think they'll have 150 million, the developers seemed to be targeting about 1% that number, since even under ideal conditions their target market can only afford roughly 1 system per 500 population.

P.S. These systems aren't to give "everyone" a computer, they're to make sure that everyone has "access" to a computer, by making shareable systems available to the extremely poor (< $365 annual income) through entrepreneurial programs.

FoulDragon at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 10/10/2005 1:19:18 AM US Mountain Standard Time, 
> plug-discuss at stcaz.net writes:
> 
>>Just about the only software likely to be run is a web browser and 
> 
> OpenOffice.org.
> n
> If there's 150 million of them in circulation, it could make a pretty large 
> market for people to develop software for.
> 
> And, of course, one of the revolutionary aspects of giving everyone a 
> computer will be that they'll figure out ways to fit it to their own needs, which 
> almost certainly means custom applications, which will be easier to support and 
> sell on the fact that they'll work on every machine in the market.
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