The Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) invested in designing a $10 laptop computer.
Until now, one laptop including labour charges is costing $47 but the ministry forecasts that the price will radically come down when the demand will rise to manufacture one million laptops. An official from HRD ministry said:
The cost is encouraging and we are hopeful it would come down to $10. We would also look into the possibility of some Indian company manufacturing the parts
The final year engineering student of Vellore Institute of Technology in conjunction with researcher from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore has proposed two designs to the ministry.
In both of the submitted designs, according to Times of India, all components would be located on a single circuitboard. This would keep prices down and make it easier to find and repair problems.
The true estimate to launch a $10 laptop is another two years:
We do not want to rush into it. Many issues remain to be resolved like royalty to the designer after the design is patented. Prototyping would also take time. We would even conduct destructive testing and create a proper maintenance network
HRD received several proposals from some big multi national companies, but none of them was willing to develop laptop for $10 bucks – greedy closed mind/source corpo-s.