Aakash receives 300,000 pre-orders till now

Aakash, hailed as the cheapest tablet around, has gathered much attention since the story of its development started. The tablet, available in India, is set to release in December to consumers. Note that a subsidized student version has already gone to various schools in India. There was a market estimation of about 250000 pre-orderings but it has far exceeded that by successfully getting 300,000 pre-orders till date – as reported by Economic Times.

There can be a difference in this no. if all the pre-books doesnot turn into actual sales, as the pre-booking is being done without any prior monetary commitment. This makes us suspect that the above mentioned number could be the number of completed pre-ordering forms, which doesnot necessarily convert 100%. Having said that, the $61 deal is mouth-watering especially when initial reviews about the tablet say its capabilities far exceeds the price. Combine the plan to bundle it with an about $2 monthly data plan and we could have a winner here for casual tablet users.

"We hope to make internet free on our devices with that technology." said Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli, "We hope to make internet free on our devices with that technology.". The technology he is referring to is one he is currently experimenting with that should be able to compress a 700MB file to mere 25MB for easy sharing.

Datawind reportedly provided about 10,000 tablets already to a few leading educational institutes in India including the IITs. The subsidized tablet costs Rs 2250 (about $45), whereas the commercial version will definitely cost more.

There will reportedly be a second Aakash in 2012, based on the feedback received from experts. Datawind plans to replace the screen with a capacitive and use a faster processor with 800MHz clock speed. The memory also is expected to rise to 1GB from the current 256MB.

Below are the technical specs of the existing Aakash –

•         Size – 190.5 × 118.5 × 15.7mm
•          7” resistive touch screen
•          Weight – 350gms
•          Android 2.2
•          No Android marketplace
•          366 MHz processor
•          HD GPU
•          256 MB RAM
•          2GB Micro SD card expandable up to 32GB
•          2 full USB 2.0 ports
•          Battery – 2100mAh
•          Camera – External USB
•          Network – Wi-Fi Enabled
•          Web Browser – DataWind Accelerated Browser
•          Modem – Inbuilt cellular and Subscriber Identity Module (SIM)

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