IDG News Service - India is closer to its much-touted target of a $35 tablet, with DataWind, a wireless Web access products maker in Montreal, designing and making a device that it will sell to the government for $50.
The country's Minister of Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal, launched the tablet, called Aakash, on Wednesday. The tablet will likely be distributed at a subsidy to students in higher education in the country.
DataWind has been able to get to a price of $38 for the tablet which has a 7-inch display with 800-by-480 pixel resolution, 256MB of RAM, 2GB flash storage, and a 366MHz processor from Connexant. The tablet runs the Android 2.2 operating system.
Local sales taxes, performance guarantees, and an exacting replacement warranty have taken the price to the government up to $50, said Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of DataWind in an interview.
The target is to get to $35 per unit, inclusive of warranty, once volumes pick up.
The Indian government is expected to buy 8 million to 10 million devices by March 31, 2012, the end of the Indian fiscal year, Tuli said. The first order of 100,000 units will be executed from a factory in Hyderabad over the next six weeks, he added.
Tuli said that Sibal's vision and the commitment of business from the government had driven the company to accept the challenge to come up with a device at about $35.
The Aakash tablet has been designed, developed and manufactured by DataWind, in partnership with an educational institution, IIT Rajasthan, DataWind said in a statement.
The design of the product was done by DataWind between its centers in Montreal and India, Tuli said. IIT Rajasthan is coordinating the project, including firming up the specifications, and doing the field testing.
DataWind plans to market the product in a number of emerging markets, and also commercially in India in November where the price will be about $60 with added GPRS (general packet radio service) capability, which will allow it to double as a phone. Higher-end versions of the product will also be launched in less price-sensitive markets like the U.K. and the U.S.
India's low-cost computer had a number of false starts and experimentation with the government at one point talking about a $10 laptop. Officials in the Department of Higher Education, however, clarified that the device would not be a laptop.
In July last year, the country's Ministry of Human Resource Development announced a $35 computing and access device for students of colleges and universities. The price of the device, which was to be designed by Indian academic research and education institutions, was eventually dropped to $10, according to a statement from the ministry.
This IT pilot fish at a government agency gets a call from the administrative officer, who's on the verge of hysterics: Her computer is dead, she's having a total meltdown, and it's all his fault.
Free Insider Guide