Today, thousands of university students and workers in Nigeria are buying refurbished Pentium 2 laptops that have less functionality than the XO for about $250 and most of the machines die within 9 months. I believe that if the XO is offered commercially in Nigeria at $200, it would be possible to sell 1 million in a year. Many middle-class Nigerians like myself would buy them for our children, instead of mobile phones; the banks would easily give loans for the purchase using the laptop as its own collateral.
The target customer has to change to parents and young adults buying their first PCs to do wordprocessing, check mails and access the Internet (which is what computers are used for 90% of the time here)
The power saving features are huge benefits given the epileptic power supply even in urban areas.
The XO is not a toy. Like microfinance, it meets needs for people in the BoP, not only children.




