The founder of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project will raise the price of the laptop from 100 U.S. dollars to 175 per unit, according to media reports Saturday.

The nonprofit OLPC aims to deliver laptops to every schoolchild in the developing world at a very low price.

Nicholas Negroponte, the former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab who now heads the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project, updated analysts and journalists on where the effort stands, saying "we are perhaps at the most critical stage of OLPC's life."

That's partly because at least seven nations have expressed interest in being in the initial wave to buy the little green-and-white XO computers: Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya. But it remains unclear which ones will be first to pony up the cash.

The project needs orders for three million machines so its manufacturing and distribution effort can get rolling.

The rising cost of materials -- in particular nickel -- is responsible for the increased price of the machine as an OLPC spokesman said the roll-out had been pushed back because of changes in the design.

However, Negroponte said the cost should drop about 25 percent per year as the project unfolds.

He added that Citibank has agreed to facilitate a payment system on a pro bono basis; Citibank will float payments to Quanta and other laptop suppliers, and governments will repay the bank.

Even at 175 dollars, the computers upend the standard economics in the PC industry.

Source:Xinhua/Agencies