“India has launched what it says is the world’s cheapest touch-screen tablet computer, priced at just $35. Costing a fraction of Apple’s iPad, the subsidised Aakash is aimed at students. It supports web browsing and video conferencing, has a three-hour battery life and two USB ports, but questions remain over how it will perform. Officials hope the computer will give digital access to students in small towns and villages across India, which lags behind its rivals in connectivity.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15180831
http://www.newswarped.com/2011/10/india-launches-35-touch-screen-ta…
http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/133077-india-launches-aa…
(do;)
For those interested, technical details of the Aakash tablet can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aakash_tablet
It runs Android 2.2.
If they wanted a cheap tablet why not go to China where you could buy them for that price already last year?
Rampant nationalism, corruption, vote buying, job creation…
This tablet will probably reach the Indian market in 2016 at $200/unit with downgraded specs.
See the Tata Nano microcar for another example. Only about 79,000 in total have been sold rather than the anticipated multi-million unit sales.
Edited 2011-10-06 05:59 UTC
That could be not an entirely bad thing, if it points to some bigger trends.
It would be a bit sad if so called “developing world” mostly just repeated the mistakes of spiralling out of control dependency on cars – initially wound up by first small steps in eliminating the alternatives and planning human settlements around the requirements of cars, not people. Which in turn leads to cars being more required to function in a given place, their greater numbers, which leads to second steps… and so on.
Leading to http://www.kyon.pl/img/18980,car,bus,traffic,.html (not the only negative of course)
There seems to be a mini Cold War going on in that part of Asia? Something which usually impacts such “banner projects” first…
After all, both sides of the big Cold War of the XX century avoided officially using the expertise of the other… even if both of them did, also in “secret projects”. Heck, there’s one apocryphal example of the US using, via few overt companies, the Soviet expertise in advanced metallurgy and micro-machining to essentially order from them fairly inconspicuous, at first sight, parts …ultimately essential in some of US spysats, of all things* (if not true, there’s still the confirmed example of how A-12 and descendants were made out of Soviet titanium)
*and that’s possibly not even the most hilarious of the examples (going all ways). Tu-4 being a copy of B-29, the first successful US cruise missile ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JB-2_Loon still firmly WW2) was the V-1, history of Jerrycans, how the Soviet RPG-7 is now even made in and used by US forces, Waffen-SS copying the Katyusha ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebelwerfer#8_cm_Raketen-Vielfachwerfe… ), or the F117 (US stealth tech in general) also inspired by and building on some Soviet breakthroughs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Ufimtsev )
Never particularly admitted, never sticking in collective conciousness of the nations.
But not doing it would be just stupid (but it seems this Indian project tries to go somewhat in that direction)
Edited 2011-10-11 06:39 UTC
Is it a joke? Processor speed less than 400 MHz! Even low cost android phones in India have 600 MHz processors. It’s outdated and too much compromised on hardware front.
You can already buy cheap and better chinese tablets for as low as 40.99 USD: http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale/wholesale-android.html?minPrice…
The 35 USD price for the indian tablet is a subsidized price and I guess that if you aren’t an indian student you are going to pay more.
I don’t recommend cheap tablets for every day use and I wouldn’t buy that $40 tablets. However, there are decent android tablets for around $200 and a $40 tablet, while not good for every day usage, it’s good enough if you want to do experiments with the hardware or the operating system and you don’t want to risk breaking a more expensive device.
the only source of energy available in a typical Indian village.