One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte tells Xconomy that the group has received a $5.6 million grant from chip-maker Marvell to develop low cost tablets built around Marvell’s low power chips. That’s not a huge surprise, since the two have been working together since earlier this year. But here’s what I learned from the Xconomy article that I didn’t already know:

  • OLPC and Marvell will be showing off a product at CES in January, 2011
  • What they show off will most likely be a tablet for students in developed nations based on the Marvell Moby design
  • Negroponte says a tablet for students in developing nations is due out on 2012, and that will be the XO 3

The XO 3 is the evolution of the XO Laptop which OLPC has been offering in developing nations for the past few years. Like the XO Laptop, the XO 3 tablet will have a rugged plastic case and a dual mode display which can be viewed just as easily outdoors as indoors. The tablet will also likely run Linux, while the Moby is currently designed to run Google Android.

Last year OLPC released a set of somewhat unrealistic looking images of a concept XO tablet. My guess is that the finished product will look more like the Moby tablet pictured at the top of this article — but with a better screen and a green plastic case.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

4 replies on “Marvell, OLPC working on low cost education tablets, XO 3 tablet coming in 2012”

  1. “Tablet for students” is a non-sense… A student is supposed to take notes, to write report, and not only to “consume” electronic media !

  2. The biggest cost challenge will be getting the cost of the Pixel Qi/e-ink type display down. The Aluratek Libre ebook reader was on sale at Borders.com for $99.99 these past few days. The $100 price is probably already attainable using LCD displays.

    Negroponte’s perseverence gave consumers netbooks. Here’s hoping he keeps pushing the computer industry to greater innovation.

    1. these things are the cheapest pieces of wasted money and resources…. ive had 3 of these OLPC products and am convinced that someone had someone else by the nutz on these things. money pit whoever is manufacturing this kind of garbage

Comments are closed.