British firm develops £22 or Rs 1713 wireless tablet

A British firm has developed the world's least expensive computer tablet for wireless Internet access, costing a mere £22 or Rs 1713.

    In a move that it likely to send shivers down the spines of executives at the likes of Sony and Apple, Datawind Ltd hopes to supply a market of billions  when the Aakash computer tablet is released later this month.

An earlier version of the Aakash (Hindi for 'Heaven') was launched last year - under an IT programme sponsored by the Indian government. Datawind produced 100,000 tablets for Indian students.

The newer version has more features but is still priced at around $US35 (Rs.1722).

Suneet Singh Tuli, Datawind's chief executive officer, said: 'We have already received over three million individual hand users pre-booking on this.'

The company said it was not planning to take on the big tablet producers but provide internet access to people who fall through an 'affordability' gap in the market.

The closest competing device to the Aakash is Apple's iPad, which sells for £330 or more.

Filling the gap: Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli said the Aakash would provide affordable internet access to four billion users around the world

With a difference in price of a staggering £300, the Aakash is clearly for emerging nations and institutions with tight budgets, places such as schools and hospitals, that would find a £300-per-tablet price prohibitive.   

Mr Singh said: 'iPad people have laptops and computers and want multimedia devices for more mobility.'

Low-income people in underdeveloped countries are 'looking for their first device' to gain access to the world-wide web.

World-wide mobile phone use has grown to almost six billion, while the number of Internet subscribers was at two billion.

'The most important thing is the price. And within that price, [customers] primarily want to get Internet access, want to have good multimedia... and then basic applications'

    - Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli
 

   Yet Mr Singh suggests there's a further four billion people who want wireless internet access but cannot afford it.

In India, for example, an estimated eight per cent of 1.2 billion population is connected to the Internet.

Internet giant Google predicted in September that the number of India's Internet users could triple in three years if they were offered easier wireless access and more affordable smartphones.

Datawind clearly hopes that Aakash will be tablet that provides that affordable alternative.

But there are drawbacks to providing such a cheap platform - critics have complained of Aakash having a dim screen, brief battery life and slow response time.

But Mr Singh said that was an unfair assessment of a product that did not pretend to be a high-end tablet.

He said: 'The most important thing is the price. And within that price, [customers] primarily want to get Internet access, want to have good multimedia... and then basic applications.

'Right now we are alone because nobody wants to focus on that market. The biggest players don't want to make devices at that level because it impacts their legacy products.'