One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit group that plans to give cheap computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, said Monday that it has received three million orders and will begin mass production.

Nicholas Negroponte, the head of the Massachusetts-based OLPC, had said in April that mass production wouldn't begin until governments had placed three million orders.

The group — started five years earlier — said Monday that production would begin in October. It would not reveal which countries would be the first to receive the $175 US laptops.

OLPC has said a number of countries — including Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya — have all expressed interest in the computers.

The group's computer, the XO, is meant to give children in poorer countries a chance to use the internet and computing technology. It was designed to be cheap to make, energy efficient and appropriate for tough conditions. It can also be hand-powered so it will work in remote locations.

The computers use free and open-source software and are being made by Taiwan's Quanta Computer, the world's leading manufacturer of portable computers.

The project was originally ridiculed as impractical, but has since attracted corporate backing from some major technology companies, including AMD, Brightstar, Chi Lin, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, Nortel Networks, Quanta Computer, Red Hat and SES Astra.

Earlier in July, OLPC also began working with computer chip maker Intel, whose chairman Craig Barrett once described the XO as a "$100 gadget." Prior to announcing its actual price earlier this year, the OLPC computer was often referred to as the "$100 laptop."

With files from the Associated Press