Datawind’s Aakash Tablet Sells 1.4 million units in India:
We covered the arrival of the $45 Aakash tablet computer a while ago and were pleasantly surprised at the ingenuity and desire of UK based Datawind to bring computing to the masses in rural India as well as in more populated areas.
Two weeks in and talk of new factories being needed:
Amazingly at only two weeks into selling the tablet online, Datawind have said that demand for the tablet is in the region of 100,000 per day, and they have a pre-order totalling some 400,000, to keep up with demand they are looking to create three new factories, and will also be looking to release a new model in mid January. This will be a slightly more powerful 700Mhz processor and will have a SIM card slot and the ability to access GPRS and 2G connections.
Aakash Ubislate 7:
The new tablet will be named the Aakash Ubislate 7 and cost around 3000 Rupee compared to the Aakash’s price tag of 2500 Rupee, and the new device is quite simply a natural progression in terms of specification on offer from the company who are there to help the Indian population move forward in the mobile technology sector that is so prevalent in many other countries.
And with India being only second to China in terms of population, each person may not have the largest amount of disposable income but the market is so huge that this reduced level of value per person still offers rich gains for those who can go in at a lower price and offer the same kind of services that more developed countries come to expect.
Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind, says:
“We never expected such a high response from both corporate and individual buyers. We plan to supply 70,000-75,000 units per day once the factories are in place by April,”
Emergency on day one of selling online:
Indeed the demand for India’s cut price tablet is that huge that on the first day of selling the tablet online they were informed by India’s computer emergency response team that the site was probably under a cyber attack, such was the high traffic shitting the site due to the demand for the new tablet.
With the iPad costing around 30,000 rupees it is easy to see why many people in India can not afford this high end model, and Datawind have obviously found a decent price level that will satisfy a large proportion of the people in the rural and city areas.
Who owns this tablet and can you please tell us your thoughts if you do, we would love to hear about it from the source so to speak.
Anthony Munns