The projects and products included in this idiosyncratic list run the gamut from small research projects at universities to field-based experiments run by NGOs to commercial products from small start-ups and large multinationals. Products are in various stages of development; while most are still in the prototyping and/or beta-testing stages, some are already in the market (and some, it should be noted, have been discontinued).
The products listed here come in many form factors: Some look like conventional PCs or laptops, others look more like PDAs or phones, and some are somewhere in between. The lines are blurring between many categories of device. We have deliberately excluded from this list devices that most people would call a 'PDA' or a 'phone', even though mobile phones are perhaps the 'low-cost ICT device' in widest use. We have also not included various examples of 'probeware' (purpose-built data collection devices), even though this category of low-cost 'computing device' is increasingly being found in many educational settings, nor various types of 'e-book readers' (with one exception).
Please note that this list is for informational purposes only; inclusion here does not suggest any endorsement by infoDev of the value or viability of any project, program or organization. The list is meant to be representational, and is by no means comprehensive. In many instances, specific countries of deployment are linked to specific initiatives; this information comes from published press reports and has not been independently verified by infoDev. In some instances, products listed here are currently only available in developed country markets; the inclusion of such products here is meant to draw attention to various types of low-cost devices that might be relevant to or available in developing country markets in the future.
