$35 mass tablet now official in India, will cost you $61

India has unveiled a low-cost tablet computer ‘Aakash’ this Wednesday. As the government seeks to harness the Internet as a tool to spread education in the country, their aims to sell it to students for about 1750Rupees ($35 approx).

Aakash is a 7inch; touch screen tab is designed and manufactured by Canada’s DataWind limited in partnership with the Indian Government. This tablet is powered by Google Inc.’s Android operating system. The Wi-Fi enabled tablet comes with a storage which can be extended up to 32GB and two USB ports are also added.

The model will be made available for other consumers at the price of 2,999 Rupees ($61 approx) along with some additional features as stated by DataWind.

According to Kapil Sibal, India’s minister for communications and information technology, Aakash will end the digital divide between the poor and others, and added that the government will explore the possibilities of state-run telecommunication-equipment maker ITI Limited, for manufacturing the Aakash Tablet locally.

G. Rajeev, senior market analyst with IDC India, said pricing has actually emerged as a key issue for adoption of tablets in India and he is waiting to see how the consumers in India are going to adopt it referring to the cheap tablet.

Source(s)