Aakash Tab, The world’s cheapest tablet PM is facing severe challenges to its future. The parent company Datawind, which manufactured it under the brand Ubislate has ended the deal with Indian Government. Only 10,000 units have been shipped by Datawind since October last year when it was unveiled.
The government has hailed the Aakash tablet as an achievement of Indian frugal engineering that would end the digital divide in a country where only one in every 10 of its 1.2 billion people use the Internet. Products such as Apple Incs iPad are beyond the reach even of many in the fast-growing middle class. The locally assembled machine has a cost price of around $50 and was to be sold to students by the government for $35.
Reasons for the Split
The relationship between the devices manufacturer, DataWind, and a government research institute soured amid complaints by test users that the processor was too slow, the battery life short and the resistive touch screen hard to use. The governments Human Resource Development Ministry is due to launch a new tender in the next few weeks to seek partners to build the tablet – a process that could see DataWind dropped.
‘It is not automatic that because you have done phase one you will do phase two,’ said a senior official at the ministry with direct knowledge of the project. Datawind won a contract last year to make 100,000 units for the government and it was thought likely it would make the additional 1 million units called for in the second phase of production. But it had lost its first-mover advantage and would face renewed competition for the contract, the official said. ‘The feeling is that sufficient interest has been generated to get better specifications at the same or a lower price,’ added the official, who declined to be named.
What Datawind Says?
It says the Government and IITs had changed the specifications late last year and now wanted a device that could meet U.S. military durability requirement for the same rock-bottom price. ‘Among other things that requires the device to take 4 inches an hour of sustained rain,’ DataWind CEO Suneet Singh said. ‘We objected to it and the project has been on hold since then, we are working with the ministry to get that resolved,’ Singh said after meeting with ministry officials in New Delhi on Tuesday.
The Aakash is aimed at university students for digital learning via a government platform that distributes electronic books and courses. DataWind says it is receiving tens of thousands of orders daily for a commercial version of the tablet with a built-in GPRS modem that is due to be launched this month for 2,999 rupees.