The $100 laptop may still not be a reality, but a One Laptop Per Child spin-off is already talking about a $50 version appearing in the next three years.

Mary Lou Jepsen, chief technology officer for OLPC, left the not-for-profit project that has been putting cheap laptops into the hands of schoolchildren in developing countries on December 31.

She has now founded her own company, Pixel Qi, which aims to produce a lower-cost laptop and develop for other devices her innovation of a sunlight-readable low-power screen.

In an interview with Groklaw, she says:

“The big laptop makers have woken up, and there will be a dozen $200-$300 laptops in the market in late 2008. I think that price is way too much…I’m starting a company to go lower – I think we need a $50-$75 laptop in the next 2-3 years.”

While Pixel Qi aims to commercialise the advances achieved in OLPC’s XO laptop, it also says it will help the project by providing products at cost.

However, it could also find itself in direct competition with OLPC.

When we spoke to Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC’s founder, last week he told us he had just attended a meeting to kick off OLPC America, based out of New York and Washington.

“It’s to look at America on a statewide basis, maybe not through schools, but [by selling] directly to kids,” he said.

OLPC has had significant success selling its XO laptop - current cost around $185 – in the US in a “Give One Get One” campaign, which for $400 also donates one free to a developing-world child.

More general availability in the US could put it up against the cheaper laptop that Pixel Qi describes as “ a new machine, beyond the XO.”

January 11th, 2008 in Internet, Mobile | Permalink