Quanta to manufacture Negroponte's OLPC

We were wondering when they'd sign off a manufacturing deal: today Quanta announced what could be one of their biggest, most difficult, lowest-margin laptop manufacturing contracts they've ever landed — no, we're not talking about Dell (though Quanta's done their machines for a while, as well as Apple, Compaq, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, IBM, Sony, Sharp, and Siemens laptops). We're talking about Negroponte's and the MIT Media Labs' OLPC $100 laptop for developing nations. Quanta, who inked another deal with MIT earlier this year, says they're aiming for a 5 - 15 million unit launch by Q4 2006 (aggressive, aren't we?), with a million or more units destined for Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Nigeria, and Thailand. No word on whether this is an exclusive manufacturing contract, but they are officially looking into a commercially developed version of the machine to subsidize costs. (Remember, OLPC is a non-profit.)

[Via TG Daily]