The OLCP (One Laptop Per Child) group has announced a confirmed order of one million of its low-price XO notebooks produced through Quanta, who manufactures notebook PC’s for Apple, Dell and HP as well as OLPC.

We had reported last month about the new inexpensive XO laptops from the OLPC initiative which are intended for use in remote villages and run on very little power to connect children to information and to each other. The challenges were to make a device that is low cost, durable and useful enough to help improve the economies, knowledge and general lives of people in remote areas.

This confirmed order is good news not only for the OLPC project, but also in the effort to bring the costs of manufacturing the laptops closer to the $100 mark. Currently the notebooks are selling for around $130 each, but with increased manufacturing will come increased efficiencies which will hopefully reduce the cost to more around the $100 mark. This price also includes a relatively small fee that Quanta must add on to the price for their manufacturing efforts. “OLPC is a nonprofit organization, but Quanta is a contract manufacturer, a for-profit business. We can’t not charge a fee for making the laptops,” said a Quanta representative.

The OLPC has had a couple of potential orders from Nigeria and Libya, but this is the first confirmed order to actually purchase the laptops and is from a group of countries including Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Thailand and Uruguay. Quanta has also indicated that there is a potential to ship a total of 10 million units yet this year to seven interested countries.