The OLPC foundation(part of Media Lab of MIT earlier) introduced the "Give One, Get One" program during Christmas and New Year holiday period of 2007/2008 to promote the sale of the $100 OLPC computers. During the launch the marketing was poor because of low marketing budget and the customers had to wait for many months before the product was actually delivered to them.But in 2008 various companies offered a helping hand and donated $15 millions worth of free advertising and Amazon took care of the OLPC's distribution processes resulting in the selling of 185,000 laptops and $37million revenue.The initial goal was to supply Third World countries with 150 million laptops by the end of 2008.But to date,only 585,000 laptops have been distributed, a further 195,000 are awaiting shipment.
The OPLC's annual budget has been slashed from $12million to $5million.50% of its staff have been laid off and the remaining 50% have taken pay cuts. OLPC's founder MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte says that the Foundation will abandon further work on developing the operating system software for the OLPC computers and concentrate on the distribution of the devices to sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan and north-western Pakistan and remaining resources will be devoted to the creation of a second-generation of inexpensive laptops.
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