According to a report from the Associated Press, the officials behind the OLPC project revealed that the new price of their device has increased to $188. Earlier this year the OLPC officials confirmed that producing one single machine will cost about $176.

Though, the One Laptop per Child group has said that it hopes to reach economies of scale for reducing the cost of the machines to the countries that will then be able to purchase them down to the $100 level.

But on Friday OLPC’s Spokesman George Snell blamed the increase on a variety of factors, including currency fluctuations and rising costs of such components as nickel and silicon

According to AP, Snell said the foundation behind the project was committed to keeping the price from rising above $190.

The “100$ notebook” or OLPC XO-1) is produced by Quanta Computers, who has a 33% market share of laptops world-wide. It contains an AMD LX-Geode CPU at 700 MHz and 256 MB of RAM. There is no hard disk, but a 1 GB flash memory. A dual-mode SVGA LCD screen (Monochrome and Colour mode) helps saving power. It has a built-in wireless network interface and colour camera.

In July  OLPC announced they have succeeded yet to get the 3 million orders for OLPC that were needed to get production started and the OLPC is ready for mass production. OLPC said there are at least seven countries (Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, and Uruguay) that have expressed interest in purchasing these laptops.

During the same month the project received a major boost as Intel withdrew its opposition to the project and, more than that, entered a deal with OLPC, exchanging each other’s technologies.

Intel’s decision was considered as a major win for OLPC’s initiative, because the chip maker has promoted its own version of a cheap notebook, called Classmate 200.

In August, Quanta Computer announced it has completed a manufacturing run of 300 units to test the production process. The shipping of the first OLPC notebooks is expected later this month or in early October.