Financial Times: Quanta Cool on Contract for $100 Laptops

[Dioneae muscipula]

On December 14, 2005, Kathrin Hille reported from Taipei for Financial
Times that the jubilation is strangely absent in Quanta's Taoyuan
headquarter after Quanta Computer won a contract to make up to 15
million notebook computers from late 2006.

Quanta Computer is currently the largest notebook computer manufacturer
in the world.

Read more details in
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/b99fc856-6cbc-11da-90c2-0000779e2340.html

An outline of the article:
* The company is to build the so-called "$100 laptops" for distribution
to children in developing countries, including China, India, Brazil,
Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria and Thailand. The project "One Laptop
Per Child" comprises the Media Lab of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, AMD, Google, Nortel and Red Hat.
* Quanta emphasized that it bid for the project "to do something for
charity", but privately executives say Quanta has to make sure "it
is in the loop" in case the commercial version of OLPC is launched.
The profit margin is very slim, currently around 6%.
* Quanta beat 3 other Taiwanese and 1 Korean contract
manufacturer in the project tender.