You may wish to include a very brief situational analysis, a listing of the issues faced in the case, and a series of meaningful and actionable recommendations. Do not use external resources. DO NOT summarize the case, try as much as you can to analyze and do the calculation from the case Exhibits to support your idea. You will have to support your idea with data or information from the case rather than just give opinions.
Marketing the $100 Laptop
Background/Summary
The case study indicates how Negroponte decided to create an affordable laptop for the developing market. The decision followed the challenge of young students affording laptops in Cambodia. The low-cost laptop would improve educational opportunities for children in the poorest countries. The case demonstrates how Negroponte would evaluate the market size of educational needs to implement a low-cost $100 laptop. The cases underscore how the company estimated the product life cycles and tapped into the educational market for students in Cambodia and other emerging countries.
Issues/Desired Outcome
Although Negroponte decides to change the pricing for low-cost laptops, it remains unclear how the company would manufacture a lightweight laptop with the ultra-thin feature for only $100. However, Negroponte faces a marketing challenge. Marketing a low-cost laptop creates a problem where other regions start having the perception of quality issues in the $100 laptops. Negroponte’s strategy contradicts the recent products that are ultra-thin and lightweight. Mostly, laptops with such features have been expensive and hard to manufacture. It would be challenging for the company to realize profits and break-even in the $100 laptops. The design, production, and supply chain challenges do not indicate how the laptop would penetrate a market with significant infrastructural problems like internet connectivity and access to electricity.
Recommendations
Decisive. Negroponte should define the core feature of the low-cost laptop to meet the $100 price. The decision will address issues critics raised of high-speed fiber optics to run through the villages in Cambodia (Negroponte 3). Negroponte would utilize a product design that does not require fiber optic or any internet connectivity but support an offline technological approach similar to the Main Learning Technology initiative for eight-grade public schools in the U.S.
Supported. The company would collaborate with other stakeholders in providing necessary infrastructure such as electricity. All this endeavor would promote the ability of Negroponte to penetrate the market for educational computers. Most children in Cambodia using $100laptop do not have access to electricity. Moreover, consumers would develop a poor brand reputation against OLPC to discount the value of affordable laptops because that would mean compromised quality. The company will face the problem of maintaining the $100 price.
Actionable. Negroponte could lead the design team in addressing design and concept challenges. As a result, the company would create an inexpensive laptop that works. Such endeavors would see the company include less expensive features that would meet the production cost and bring technology to Cambodia and other emerging economies.
Reasonable. The company should assemble parts from the market to address the supply chain and production challenges. Different suppliers worldwide can help the Negroponte team find chap raw materials and use them to design low-cost laptops. Therefore, the company would ensure that it creates multiple designs with varying low-cost laptops.
Outcome. The company should carry out a marketing and production audit. The move would increase the market feasibility and help the designers to understand elements to incorporate in the overall design. Successful market feasibility would allow the company to address any emerging challenge with the production, design, and supply of low-cost laptops.
Negroponte and the entire design team are responsible for positioning the first-time technologies of remerging markets by targeting the needs of teachers and schools, exposing children to technology, and working on the design that would create mobile-centric products. Extensively, the company would change the design benchmarks and sell in lower quantities but achieving product value.
Work Cited
Negroponte, Nicholas. “The $100 laptop.” Globalization and Education. De Gruyter, 2008. 1-23.
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