Indian government may sell the current version of Aakash tablet for Rs 1,500, which is more than the Aakash 2’s original subsidised price.
It is to be remembered that President Pranab Mukherjee unveiled the Aakash 2 in November last year, when the tablet was made available for students of the country for a subsidies price of Rs 1,130. However, its retail version was selling under the name UbiSlate 7Ci for a price of Rs 4,499.
Meanwhile on Monday, Telecom and IT minister Kapil Sibal while talking to reporters said that the government wants to sell the Aakash tablet to the people at a cost of Rs 1,500 apiece.
“I asked Rajat Moona (director general, C-DAC) to help us in Aakash. Let us take that Aakash to the people of this country for a sum of Rs 1,500. Each student must have a Aakash in his/her hand so that they can see the world with it,” Sibal said during a function in New Delhi yesterday.
It is not clear whether the minister was aware of the original subsidized price of the Aakash 2 or he is referring to some other improved version of the Aakash tablet that may be launched sometime soon.
The Aakash 2 tablet arrives with 7-inch touchscreen display that supports 480×800 Pixel resolution natively. This screen is capable of supporting 4-point multi-touch. Datawind has used a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 mobile processor and 512 MB RAM to power the Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system of the tablet. There is a front facing VGA camera to click images or initiate video chat. There is a 3.5 mm audio port to enjoy music on the same. On normal battery, the tablet offers about three hours of run time.
The first version of the tablet, Aakash was the dream of many and eventually turned into a nightmare. Delays in the availability, disappointing device quality and several issues plagued the first generation Aakash Tablet. The second version of the tablet seems to have not garnered much popularity in the country as many private players have come out with their own cheap tablets around Rs 5,000 which have much better specification and were also readily available from online as well as physical retailers.