To Aakash Or Not To Aakash - That Is The Question

Boy o Boy! This is going to be a sad news for the lovers of Aakash - the $35 tablet that got fame all over the world as the 'Cheapest Tablet' in the world. Indian government looked quite bullish on expansion of the brand Aakash at the time of the launch of the first tablet in the series. The main aim of the initiative behind bringing the lowest cost tablet to Indian student was to 'enable' them, and not to be obsessed with the hardware (& software), says MM Pallam Raju, HRD minister. We're getting reports that the Indian government has 'almost' given up on the project - that once showed rays of hope of bringing the computing power (read Angry Birds) to the hands of millions of Indian students.

Raju further said that the Government would want people to decide on what hardware they want in their hands and the role of the Government was to be an enabler. He opined that students should decide which device is useful to them than government deciding it for them. Raju's stand seems to be 180 degree different from his predecessor, Mr. Kapil Sibal who now heads IT & Communications department for the Indian Government. Kapil Sibal had proposed making the Aakash Tablet available to millions of Indian students at a subsidised price.


The tablet itself has remained in the news for all right and wrong reasons. The initial contract to design and manufacture the tablet was given to Canada based DataWind Technologies with software and hardware design inputs being given by prestigious Indian Institutes Of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Rajasthan and then Chennai. The tablet got shipped to India and despite getting not-so-encouraging reviews from the tech & gadget reviewers; managed to ship at an astonishing rate of about 100,000 tablets per day. Thanks to the Government's involvement and public announcements that created a huge buzz among the people.

Ashok Thakur, secretary of higher education remained non-committal about the future of Aakash tablet and whether the Government was planning to continue to invest in Aakash tablet. The latest update makes us wonder whether Aakash III is work in progress. We recently wrote about the Aakash III hardware specs and it looked like the tablet's being actively worked on. We don't know whether Aakash III will ever see the light.

We learn that the Government was preparing to order 5 million of the Aakash 2 tablets earlier this year but the note was returned to the ministry with a mandate to put a fresh tender to have the device manufactured locally. There were debates in the tech media whether Aakash Tablet - Made In India Or China?. It was reported by leading publications that the Aakash tablet was actually manufactured in China and was shipped to India and the local manufacturing units had no role to play. IIT Mumbai was overseeing the overall project and was to take action against Datawind in case the company couldn't supply the tablets it had won contract for. Now it looks like IIT's waiting for the March 31 deadline.


Retrospectively, there always were doubts about the future of the Aakash tablet. Chinese electronics giant, Aakash 2 Tablet - Lenovo Says "Quality Tablet For Rs. 2276 Is Very Challenging" which was to bid for manufacturing of tablets did a study and quickly found out that it was 'impossible' to make the tablet under $50 price tag and maintain quality standards. It's only 'now' that the Indian Government might have realised what Lenovo was trying to say.

The government now says that they'd rather focus on building a solid connectivity throughout India through their National Knowledge Network aka NKN initiative. The government would provide connectivity and leave the hardware+software decision to the end-users - which probably is the right thing to do and sensible as well.

It'd be interesting hear CEans views on the whole Aakash episode. Did the Government just was a ton of public money on cheap hardware that went nowhere?

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