OLPC was a huge success. But not the way Negroponte expected.

The OLPC scared the industry to death. MS was so scared that it made Windows work on it. Tablets did not exist as consumer goods at the time (we had some but only for businesses and they were not practical to use) and all the major PC maker were expected year after year to churn out low cost laptops for the "education" market.

Then tablets came and the whole product category just disappeared.