India unveils ’world’s cheapest tablet PC

www.mangaloretoday.com

New Delhi, Oct 5, 2011: The world’s cheapest tablet PC, costing Rs 2,276, was launched today and it will be available at around half this price to students as part of government’s programme to expand education through information technology.

Students proudly show their The tablet PC, named Aakash, will cost the government Rs 2,276. It will be given to students after subsidising the price by up to 50 per cent, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said today while unveiling the 7-inch touchscreen device here.

 

 

"The price includes taxes and cost of transportation. The government will provide subsidy of 50 per cent to institutes buying it. It will cost around Rs 1,100-Rs 1,200 to institutes," he said.

The government has also set an ambitious target of bringing down the cost of such device to as low as USD 10 (around Rs 500), the minister said. "As we will scale up manufacturing capacity, the prices will fall. My target is to provide tablet for USD 10 to our children in coming years," Sibal added.

 

 

This tablet is for students and the government will start distributing at central and technical institutions. In 12th Five Year Plan, "we will provide these devices to students studying in class 9 onward up to class 12," he said.

An initial order of 1 lakh devices has been placed with device maker Datawind, the minister said. The procurement order will be scaled up later with an aim to bringing down prices further, he added. "If 10 lakh pieces are ordered, then it will be priced at Rs 1,750 (cost to the government) which will include transportation cost and vendor’s profit as well. So, I have fulfilled my promise of USD 35 tablet," he said.

Sibal said he will ask telecom vendor ITI to manufacture it and will seek support of other industry players to scale up the production and reduce costs. Datawind has said that it will integrate 3G and GPRS connectivity in the next shipment to the government without any additional cost.

The company has plans to sell these devices through open market from November at a price of Rs 2,999. "The upgraded version of the tablet will allow its users to make calls as well and have connectivity within and outside their premises," Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli said.

He said the tablet is built using nearly 800 components and most of it has been imported from various countries. "On the basis of component cost, 31 per cent has been imported from Korea, 24 per cent from China, 16 per cent from the US, 5 per cent from other part of the world and 16 per cent cost has been incurred in India," Tuli said.

The Aakash tablet is a 7-inch touch screen tablet PC based on Google’s Andorid 2.2 operating system with 366 Mhz processor, 256 MB RAM and can support data storage of up to 32 GB through on an external disk. This tablet will have battery back-up of 180 minutes.

With this configuration, Datawind says the device can support Internet access, access to e-books,high definition video content, office documents, instant messaging and other feature requires to support basic education needs.