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I think "total failure" is a bit harsh. At the very least it sparked people's imaginations, and shed some light on what would work and wouldn't work in the real world. Perhaps netbooks/chromebooks that came after also took some inspiration from it.

The OLPC was likely a direct cause for the first Eee PC, and thus the netbook device category: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC

Even though the project may not have been succesful, I therefore think it had a pretty strong impact on the democratization of computing, and may also have influenced the development of Chromebooks.

Economic development is the best way to get technology into the hands of the poor. It's why even homeless people have smartphones in the US

I went to school in Maine which had one of the first of these programs in the USA. It was a great success. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_Learning_Technology_Init...