I recently read an article titled Negroponte – missionary not manufacturer, in which the author makes the argument that, well, Negroponte is a missionary, not a manufacturer. This is a very interesting point and it caused me to ponder the definition of success.

Negroponte has been pilloried in the press and the blogosphere and by analysts around the world and even to an extent, by me. You can see this in a three-part blog posting that I wrote.

While some of the criticism may be valid, if you actually change how you view his role … from someone trying to manufacture and sell millions of laptops, to someone envisioning the computer as a key tool for accelerating learning and technology adoption, then his cause could be seen in a different light. And that is exactly why the world embraced him in 2005 when he first introduced his OLPC project.

In my view, Negroponte’s legacy is his role as the pioneer who established the value of computer access to under-privileged students in under-served markets.

He essentially ushered in the era of low-cost laptops, or “netbooks.” As general manager of the group at Intel that was responsible for the Classmate PC, I know for a fact that Negroponte’s high-profile efforts in 2005 accelerated the development of a comparable product, the Classmate PC. The competitive pressure Negroponte put on us at Intel was huge. And the need for a ultra-low power, low cost chip to power the Classmate was one of the reasons for the creation of the Atom processor and the subsequent explosion in the demand for netbooks.

But netbooks, in general, are not going to schools.

A recent report by DisplaySearch shows that while sales of netbooks have grown exponentially, OLPC had only 2% and Classmate only 1% share of the netbook market in Q3 2008. Acer and Asus sat at the top with 38% and 30% respectively, far outpacing the two companies that spearheaded this category. OLPC and Classmate are the only two netbooks focused solely on education. I don’t know the breakdown of Acer and Asus’s shipments by end-user segment, but I really doubt many are going to schools.

Part of the reason is that, in general, 1:1 computing is unrealistic in developing nations and in under-served markets.  Providing one laptop per student is great in principle, but it is unrealistic in practice for developing nations trying to stretch their budgets. Schools want to maximize their student access to a computer, and the primary way to do that is through a shared computer lab. A computer lab is deployed with desktops, which typically cost less than laptops, break down less, and are more secure than laptops, which are much easier to steal.

That is why solutions like those from my company, NComputing, are seeing greater success in schools. NComputing provides a software/hardware solution that allows up to 31 users to simultaneously access a low-cost desktop PC or server ($300-$500) with full PC and multimedia functionality at a cost of about $50-70/user (not including monitors, keyboards or mice).  Even when 1:1 computing is desired, a low-cost desktop PC is often the preferred choice.  In fact, one of the biggest deployments of 1:1 computing in terms of overall penetration of students in a country is Macedonia, which chose NComputing’s thin client solution over competitive offerings.

The reason is simple. At $50-$70/user vs. the $300-$400/user cost of a netbook, you can stretch your education IT budget significantly to cover more students.

Ten years from now, when there will likely be computers in every school on the planet, we can attribute the success to a missionary/visionary who convinced the world that giving kids access to computers is a critical step for personal and economic development. I think that’s a great success. Unfortunately, because those computers will likely not be from OLPC, Mr. Negroponte may not have that same perception of success.