Aakash, the Nano of the tablet industry, has run into rough weather with the central government looking to find other suppliers to supply low cost tablets. However, that hasn’t deterred state governments and universities from going ahead and placing requests for the supply of these low cost tablets to empower their students.
For example, University of Mumbai has so far received around 25,000 requests for the low-cost Aakash tablet which costs just Rs 1138 for students. The requests have come from around 90 colleges and departments across the university’s jurisdiction.
These numbers are part of the first phase and it is expected that similar numbers will be ordered in the subsequent phases.
Similarly Andhra Pradesh government has also decided to arm its students with the tablet. They have reportedly sent a proposal for 10,000 tablets to the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry.
In the first phase, state universities, engineering and polytechnic colleges in Andhra Pradesh will get these tablets followed by students of private colleges in the second phase.
We at ‘The Mobile Indian’ have been flooded by calls from schools and individuals enquiring about the tablet and all of them want to buy it immediately. What can however derail this opportunity for the company is its inability to fulfill these orders in time. So far the company has not really been up to the task constantly changing its plans and not having delivered the tablets in numbers that it is expected to.
Earlier, HRD ministry officials quoted as saying that the government may not procure more than initial quota of one lakh tablets from DataWind as they started the online booking of Aakash tablet before supplying it to the government.
Also, Aakash tablet has been criticised for its poor battery life, poor Processor that is unable to do multi-tasking and below par display quality.