World's Cheapest Tablet...

[copperoak]

Hello All,

Just happened upon this interesting article in the Globe and Mail about "The World's Cheapest Tablet":How a Montreal company won the race to build the world's cheapest tablet - The Globe and Mail.

It concerns the emerging third world market for tablets that will not likely be satiated with the usual suspects we are discussing in this forum (and others). Datawind out of Toronto is currently in the running to produce a competitive alternative -- at a quarter of the price of the $199 Kindle Fire, or, at this point in time, the 16 GB Playbook!

It won't quite be apples and apples (pardon the unfortunate puns) -- From the article: "Part of the difficulty in engineering such a device is that the underlying goal—that its final price should be within the means of those who can’t afford high-priced tablets—dictates crucial engineering and component decisions. A piece of high-impact-resistant glass, such as the touchscreen face of an iPad, can cost upward of $20. Datawind’s touchscreen glass, which the company had engineered down the street, costs less than $2, though it won’t allow for luxuries like pinch-and-zoom finger swiping. There were also compromises on processing power: Datawind’s 366 megahertz processor costs less than $5, a fraction of the $15-plus price tag on the chips that power iPads and other comparable tablets. And while the decision to run Google’s free Android mobile operating system on the gadget saves money, it requires coders to dig deep into the Linux kernel that underpins the software, tweaking it until it runs smoothly on Datawind’s weaker processor."

Thought you might like know...

Best Regards,

David

[grahamf]

As long as it doesn't disintergrate if you hold it the wrong way.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Michelle Haag]

That's actually a really cool story. Good for them.
This project goes beyond just building another tablet; its goal is to connect millions of people to the rest of the world.

India, a country of 1.2 billion people, has the fastest-growing mobile market on the planet. More than 800 million people in India have mobile phones and more than 10 million are signing up each month. Yet the number of Indians with regular access to the Internet is shockingly low: about 10%. The Indian government is banking on a nationally subsidized mobile tablet to help pull millions of its disconnected citizens online and into the modern economy.

I hope they are successful. Everyone deserves to experience the internet, and the rest of the world around them. This could be a really good thing for so many people.