Reliance 4G Tablet For Rs. 5000!

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is apparently in talks with DataWind – a Canada based company and Aakash, the world’s current cheapest tablet maker to bring world’s cheapest 4G tablet to Indians. The estimated price of this new 4G tablet would be between Rs. 4000 – Rs. 5000 (~$100).

“We have had preliminary talks with Reliance Industries. It is possible to embed a TD-LTE (long-term evolution) chipset in the tablet for 4G coverage. To begin, this December we’ll launch a GPRS-enabled tablet at an MRP of Rs 2,999 with some Indian operators. Once 4G services are launch we’ll have a product in that space too,” said Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of DataWind confirming the same in a report by Business Standard (Technology).

However, Reliance Industries spokesperson has declined to comment over it.

If the companies are successful in launching the tablet at ‘that’ price, it would be a quarter of the price of tablets being offered by global electronics giants. We’ve a solid reason to believe that Indians would see 4G in India because Reliance is already getting ready to launch 4G services in India by 2012 by the second quarter.

If released, the next 4G tablet is expected to create enough storms in the upcoming 4G market with specially the low-cost devices. The company’s target is also very clear with its low-cost strategy. According to Tuli, the company wants to offer tablets at less than half their competitors’ (HTC, Dell, Motorola mainly) prices in the competitive landscape.

At the same time, having a partner like DataWind that promises tad cheap 4G tablets is actually a very big boost for RIL. If Reliance offers its 4G tablet at the price promised, India could leapfrog all the consumer devices ever produced to access the Internet and land straight up on tablets.

Priced at Rs. 2,999, Aakash which was recently developed by DataWind has recently been unveiled by Human Resources Development Minister Mr. Kapil Sibal in the capital.

Source:TruthDive

Why a $35 Tablet Would Never Succeed in the U.S.

How unfair! India is getting its long-promised $35 tablet, yet we are spending $500 for an iPad.

I have to admit that I am dazzled by the media coverage of the launch of the Aakash, the world's cheapest tablet. It will cost $50 per unit for the Indian government, $60 in retail and possibly as little as $35 once the volume increases. When we are able to contain our jealousy, however, it's easy to see that this tablet is neither a discounted iPad nor a product that could succeed in the Western hemisphere, despite its impressively low price.

More than a year ago, when it was announced that India would be developing a $35 tablet, many of us were quick to question the ability to take such a device from an idea to a commercial product. In the end, we all know what happened to the OLPC, which was supposed to sell for $100 but finally sold for $190. The Aakash took a similar path, as the retail price of the device is now almost twice as high as the original target price.

The Aakash tablet is designed by Canada-based Datawind and comes with a 7-inch 800x480 pixel display, 256 MB of RAM, 2 GB of NAND flash storage and a 366 MHz Connexant processor. There is also an SD expansion slot with two versions. One has Wi-Fi only, whereas the more expensive $60 version has SIM card-based GPRS cellular connectivity.Datawind said that the total price of the base model is $38, but it is actually $50 when additional fees such as local taxes and a replacement warranty are included. The Indian government apparently guaranteed a purchase volume of eight to ten million units by March 31, 2012. The first 100,000 units will be built within the next six weeks in a factory in Hyderabad.

Higher-priced versions of the tablet will be coming to the U.S. in the future. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Would you buy a $35 or... Let's be realistic. Would you buy a $60 tablet that features the specs mentioned above? You may buy one, but I doubt that you would enjoy using it beyond the first few minutes. I need to expand on that.

Without having touched it, I am convinced that the Aakash is one of the best-designed computers I have seen in a long time – at least since Intel's bug-free computer. (That computer was offered in the early 2000s and was designed for rural Africa with features to keep insects out of the case. In addition, it could be connected to a car battery.) The Aakash tablet is a computer with a strong regional and cultural focus that caters exactly to the needs of a very specific group of people.

India has a population of about 1.14 billion people. The latest telecommunication data I could find from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India indicate that 81 million of them, or 7 percent of the population, access the Internet today via wired or wireless devices. Only 9.45 million, or 0.8 percent of the population, have access to a broadband connection to the Internet. If only 7 percent of the Indian population access the Internet today (actually, the data go back to 2009), then we can conclude that Internet access is still a rarity in India. In comparison, 74.1 percent of people living in the United States access the Internet today and about 37 percent browse via a broadband connection, according to Nielsen.

It is clear that Internet access works differently in the U.S. than it does in India, and India will need, at least for now, different means to provide its population access to the Internet than does the United States. Let's go a little further by looking at wired versus wireless telecommunications in India.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India states that there were only 36.2 million wired phone connections in India in 2009. Keep in mind, there are 1.14 billion people – and only 3 percent have a wired telephone. The reason is the extent of rural areas in India, which has given the country a good reason to focus on wireless communications. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, there are currently 635.5 million active cell phone subscribers in India, which translates to a market penetration of 54 percent. People in India are used to paying way too much for their ability to communicate wirelessly (much more than we think we are paying for our communications). A typical smartphone in India costs about as much as it does in the U.S. – about $600 without a contract. However, the average income per capita in India is just $1,039 per year, which means that advanced communications via a mobile computer that is more than just a feature phone will require people in India to invest more than half of their annual income into such a device. Would you be willing to do that here in the U.S., considering that our current average income is $46,381 per capita?

There is a real need in India for a basic, low cost Internet device that may also serve as a cell phone – one such as the Aakash. An expenditure of $60 is about 6 percent of the annual per capita income in India, which is far more acceptable. It is comparable to about $2,800 here in the U.S. It isn’t cheap, but it’s better than $25,000.

In India, the Aakash almost certainly has a bright future. It perfectly fills a need and provides an affordable way to communicate and access information on the Internet.

In the U.S., it is a different story. You can imagine the first reviews with complaints about a terrible display, lack of storage space, slow processor and cheap materials. We have different expectations, and while it may be cool to own a $35 or $50 tablet initially, it has an older version of Android where you will need a vastly more capable device to run the applications in which you may be interested. There are no such expectations in India. You can't miss what you don't know, and you will be happy with it if it enables you to do more than you could before. The Aakash will enable millions of people in India to access the Internet – people who could not have previously afforded Internet browsing. Also, imagine the new ways of wireless communication it may facilitate.

A $35 or $50 tablet is what India needs today. In the U.S. this tablet would definitely fail.

By Wolfgang Gruener   

Source: TomsGuide

Why India's Cheap Tablet May Not Work Out

The cheapest mobile handset doesn't compromise on the basics: calls, SMS, battery life. Nor does the Tata Nano. The Aakash does
-Prasanto K Roy

When India's "$35 tablet" finally launched in October, it surprised skeptics. I was among them: I hadn't thought it would ship.

Even at $60, it's the cheapest tablet in the world. I saw an early unit, but it was factory-finished and boxed...suggesting that they will ship production units. That's no guarantee of volume and real cost, but it was impressive.

The tablet, light and nicely hand-held, is built to a price. The 7" LCD is overlaid with a resistive touchscreen, so everything from the standby-unlock Android swipe to menus and apps usage was iffy. The battery lasted just over two hours on a charge.

Inside, the (factory-made, multilayer SMT) board is neat. The Conexant system-on-chip, 366 MHz Arm processor built in, is flanked by two Hynix memory modules (256 MB DDR2 SDRAM and 2 GB NAND flash). Local flavor includes the government-committee-mandated twin USB ports (overkill), adding to a micro-SD card slot. (The screws wouldn't go back into the plastic afterward: the threads slipped.)

Anyway, it works. "Built to a price" .. is no surprise.

So why do I remain a skeptic?

First, because the ecosystem isn't there: apps, content, training and support, power at every school desk (given the 2-3 hour battery).

Two, neither the small 7" handheld format nor the low battery backup lend themselves to serious student use.

Three, the iPad has set the benchmark of usability and battery life...and nothing else, at any price, seems to sell. The gap will grow.

Four, a tech product has to sustain on merit, not just through government commitment--which blocks rapid evolution and improvement.

Five, bulk educational purchases should also be on merit, based on the question: is this the best use of a million dollars?

A few days after the launch, BBC News asked me for a short review. I was critical. Three points emerged from the global reaction to my review. One, that if it did what I said, it was impressive at $60--"so where can we buy one?". Two, they said I should encourage indigenous efforts, and kill the stereotype that emerging-economy products were inferior. Three, that I should not compare "your country's Tata Nano to a Mercedes". (I cite only the criticism; I got appreciation as well.)

I liked the Nano analogy. Here's the difference. A Tata Nano doesn't compromise on the basics: the ability to take you from A to B safely and reliably, consuming the least fuel. Hygiene 101 for a small car.

A cheap $25 Nokia mobile handset does not compromise on the basics: the ability to make a call, send messages, and run a day or two on a charge.

The Akash does compromise on the basics expected of a tablet: easy and fluid use; battery life; apps support, ruggedness.

It will probably improve with version two. As with the Tata Nano, it will be difficult to hold the price (say, if the touchscreen tech is upgraded). Yet, a $99 price point for a usable product is better than a forced $35 mandate.

Its future, however, really depends on the content-apps ecosystem, and how well the Aakash can align to the school curriculum (or vice versa).

Which is why it would have made more sense to source an e-reader like the Kindle, or the (sort of Indian) Wink: the content is all there, in the form of PDFs of every single coursebook out there: and the battery life is great.

Source: PcQuest

 

The low-tech path to Aakash

Buroshiva Dasgupta examines the education corrections that India needs

WE INDIANS often tend to reach among the world’s ‘only’ or world’s ‘best’ in our ambitions, and then usually cut a sorry figure. Now we have come up with the world’s ‘cheapest’ – a touchscreen tablet, Aakash, which costs Rs 2,999 (around $60). The aim is to revolutionise education by endowing each child with a computer. We have such programmes around the world, but the revolution is yet to come. We know the fate of the simputer – and other such applications – which have disappeared because they could not keep up with the times. And we also know the Indian education scene where we still have schools with no blackboards, leave alone computers.

True, India has jumped stages in satellite technology and telecommunication and it can, if it genuinely wants to, jump the blackboard stage in education infrastructure and directly enter the modern age. We know the success of the ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiment in the Mumbai slums where children learn to use computers on their own without guidance. The success of the ‘minimally invasive education’ partly inspired the movie Slumdog Millionaire but the Indian education experiment is no Bombay Talkies or Hollywood movie.

Aakash will first be distributed among college students and then the schools. It finally also aspires to enter the rural areas. But why cannot it be reversed – and reach the masses first? Aakash is supposed to remove the digital divide. If we go back to the history of the introduction of English in India, we know how the British government accepted the Macaulay report – which deliberately created a divide in education – and not the Adams’ report which promoted the rural education system (lokshiksha) to reach the masses. So now we have an education superstructure, thanks to Macaulay, without a proper foundation. Should Aakash continue to encourage the existing divide in education or, as professed by the government, help revolutionise the change?

So Aakash should start with the villages. We need not worry how the students will learn to use them. Let us have faith in our future generations – experiments have shown they can learn on their own – give them the toys. It is fun and simple enough to operate. The real obstacle is the connectivity. China may not be free with information, but the internet access in the country has grown phenomenally. But not so in India. Why? We still deprive access and talk of removing the digital divide. We cannot get away by saying they cannot afford it. If the tablet can be made affordable, so can the internet connectivity. In the remote Sunderbans, where there are villages with no electricity yet, every household has a mobile phone – such is the intense desire of the people there to be in touch with the mainstream. And they can afford it from their measly earnings. They travel miles to get their mobiles charged. The mobile phone saved lives during the cyclone Aila. The private phone manufacturers rivalled with each other and made the gadget affordable and placed the towers in almost inaccessible areas to reach out to their customers. Why cannot this happen with the internet? Or the wifi or the cloud?

The Indianisation of the tablet Aakash endows it with an USB port to suit the local conditions. It’s a welcome innovation though it might be argued it goes against the sleekness of its design. Steve Jobs’s newest iPad for example has its connectivity in the cloud. The makers of Aakash say that they are trying to procure internet connections for the users at Rs 99 a month. But connectivity (as the Sunderbans example proves) is becoming an essential commodity more than even electricity. A policy is needed here so that the private vendors compete and make it affordable in the remotest villages – just like the mobile phone. Even the manufacture of Aakash should not be left to a single vendor.

The success of Aakash will depend on the spread of connectivity. We don’t have to burn coal to give connectivity. It’s cheaper than supplying electricity. And today, the technology is to supply it without towers.

BUT WHAT about the software? What do we teach? Old wine in new bottles? We have language barriers; we have different education systems colliding with each other. The 3D modules for education can break the language barrier; but they have to be interesting – not repeat the dull gyaan-jyoti variety models. The distance education modules of the universities are undergoing technological changes. The V-sat transmissions are being replaced by the cheaper transmissions through the internet. But the internet has to be much faster – too much buffering time will only distract the student and destroy the essence of education – to improve concentrated work. The children are more tech-savvy. The dead weight of teachers who are slow learners, let us admit, will have to be eliminated from this revolution. Let the hardware – the technological infrastructure – reach the children first; they will learn faster than their teachers.

We should not get into a bind, for example what a state like West Bengal has got itself in, where all the education development money goes to pay the salaries of the teachers. You ask for computers; the authorities say they have no money. It is common knowledge that none of the universities of India come anywhere near the first hundred universities of the world, primarily for lack of quality research. Let more funds be allocated for a central pool of education researchers (which is not meant to be mere salaries but) who will create the new education software – something which will hold the child’s attention and not bore them to death.

We need more experiments, research – and funds – for this vital role of developing knowledge capsules for all subjects, which is simple, attractive and yet up-todate. We can then disseminate them – to the last mile – through connectivity and the tablet in place. Aakash will touch ground zero only then. Good that it is cheap; competition will make it cheaper. But the education software it is supposed to provide has to be value-added. And that has to come cheap too. We dread the prospect of privatising education – and justifiably too. But the competition of the private corporate world possibly needs to touch education too – to overcome its slumber. Can technology – in the form of Aakash and connectivity – do it? The quality of education capsules can be made competitive.

Buroshiva Dasgupta is a senior journalist based in Kolkata.
(buroshiva@gmail.com)

Source :Tehelka

Aakash - The Revolutionary Tablet

Aakash is the name of the new super cool and the cheapest tablet ever developed in India. At just a cost of $35, Aakash is powered with an Android Operating System v2.2 with high end performance. The Tablet supports multiple file formats with easy access to World Wide Web.

The tablet will be produced in collaboration of Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Government of India and Data Wind , A UK based company. It will come by the end of the next month with a price of $60 for the general public and for $35 for students.

Whether it will prove to be a boon for the struggling Indian Education System is still an unanswered question.

For more info log on to http://aakashstore.blogspot.com/


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