WOW DEN

As the world’s cheapest tablet gets ready to become completely indigenous, speculation over the practicality of its production is gaining new grounds.

The HRD ministry recently announced that Datawind- the company that has been responsible for producing Aakash, will no longer be associated with the project. Spats between Datawind and IIT Rajasthan over specifications of the tablet became a matter of public interest when Datawind accused IIT Rajasthan of asking it to comply with constantly changing specifications. Datawind, on the other hand has been held responsible for not being able to produce the tablets at a rate sufficient to meet the government’s requirements.

Issues also arose over the quality of tablets, with the testers (mostly IIT students) complaining that it was too slow, had a weak battery and insufficiently sensitive resistive screen.

Datawind also drew the HRD ministry’s ire over its decision to offer the tablet in the open market before providing it to the government. Datawind’s commercial version of Aakash –UbiSlate 7 was released in December last year and became an instant hit with the public.
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing(C-DAC) and the Industrial Training Institutes(ITIs) have now been roped in for the Aakash project along with the IITs. The tenders for production of the next version of Aakash will soon be floated; HCL has already expressed its interest in bidding for the project.

The cost of the new tablet is expected to remain the same (around $ 49), even as its quality is expected to improve significantly. The price is expected to fall even further as the demand for the tablet increases and the government moves closer to its target of providing a tablet to every child of the country.

The new tablets are also expected to carry the “Made In India” tag as the project becomes completely indigenous. To this front, three new IITs have now been involved.

Aakash 2 is expected to be out by April this year. Whether that deadline is met amidst all the controversy, is another matter entirely.