Optima may not be the only vendor to see a drop off in education tenders, as more schools are offered alternative products like the Eee PC and tablet PCs at a cheaper cost than traditional PCs and notebooks.

Recently Australian white-box builder Optima announced a $5 million loss for the half year ending December 2007. Optima CEO Cornel Ung said in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, the drop in the vendor’s business was mainly from the education sector, where the NSW Department of Education changed to adopt a single supplier policy.

Ung stated: “This was the main cause for the decline in revenue and margin for the period, compared to last year.”

However, vendors might expect more in education tender drop offs as education departments are offered alternative products to traditional PCs and notebooks.

According to IT analyst and research firm, Gartner Group, there is broad industry interest in ultralow-cost mobile PCs for the education sector as PC technology providers seek new growth opportunities in emerging markets.

Arnette Jump, Gartner analyst, predicts that by 2012, more than 6 million ultralow-cost PCs will be shipped to educational organisations, particularly in emerging markets.

“PC vendors that target governments and education organisations in emerging markets should have a plan for a limited launch of their own branded ultralow-cost PC models in Asia/Pacific and Latin America by the middle of 2008, or they will miss the early opportunities in the education segment with ultralow-cost PCs,” said Jump.