Well, if you could build a laptop that was designed to never be upgraded, ran on embedded software, and basically was to be thrown away when upgrades or repair was needed, I’ll bet one could really get the manufacturing cost down.
I’m also suspecting these things have a pretty small display screen.
Regarding the cost, I am reminded of the electronic tuners in TV’s that replaced the old mechanical barrel tuners. They offered the customer a far superior product and, once manufacturing was ramped up, were a fraction of the cost to produce. I suspect that with OLED’s and other manufacturing shortcuts it would be possible to produce a sub- $100 laptop. It is not relevant that the OLED has a lifespan of 5 or 6 years. One would have gone through 20 computers in that timespan. :)
The computer truly has become a commodity. No wonder Microsoft is laying off for the first time in their history. The operating system works, works well, and we just are not seeing the changes we saw when we went from dos to NT based windows. I think the days of making money selling an operating system have gone the way of the days (shortlived) of making money selling a web browser.
Man, we are really living in interesting times.
The BBC reports that it might have been a mistranslation, and that they actually announced a laptop that would cost around $100US.