India has launched what it says is the world’s cheapest touch-screen tablet computer, priced at just $35 but full functioning device in order to attempt to bridge the digital divide. Aakash is an Android-based tablet computer designed and developed by UK-based company DataWind and IIT (Rajasthan) primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content.
The commercial version of the tablet will be retailed under the brand name UbiSlate 7. 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.
It hopes that Aakash tablet will give digital access to students in small towns and villages across India, which lags behind its rivals in connectivity.
“The rich have access to the digital world, the poor and ordinary have been excluded. Aakash will end that digital divide,”
“We’ve created a product that will finally bring affordable computing and internet access to the masses.”
The company says it will also offer a commercial version of the tablet, called UbiSlate. It is expected to hit the shelves later this year, retailing for about $60.
“Our goal was to break the price barrier for computing and internet access,” DataWind CEO said.
Experts say it does have the potential to make a huge difference to the country’s education, particularly in rural areas where schools and students do not have access to libraries and up-to-date information.
But critics say it is too early to say how the Aakash will be received as most cheap tablets in the past have turned out to be painfully slow.
“The thing with cheap tablets is most of them turn out to be unusable,” Rajat Agrawal of technology reviewers BGR India told Reuters news agency.
“They don’t have a very good touch screen, and they are usually very slow.”
Critics also point out that an earlier cheap laptop plan by the same ministry came to nothing.
In 2009, it announced plans for a laptop priced as low as $10, raising eyebrows and triggering worldwide media interest.
But there was disappointment after the “Sakshat” turned out to be a prototype of a hand-held device, with an unspecified price tag, that never materialised.