Datawind, the maker of the world's cheapest tablet has put up for sale about 30,000 tablets online at a price of Rs 2500 each, with a delivery period of seven days.
 

The seven inch tablet with Android 2.2 is now available through its portal aakashtablet.com. "We have put up on sale about 30,000 tablets online, which will have a cash on delivery of 7 days. We have achieved pre-sale orders of about 400,000 tablets from individuals and corporates. But current supplies will only be limited for individual buyers," Datawind CEO and founder Suneet Singh Tuli told ET. 

 

Aakash's next commercial version called the Ubislate 7, which has a faster processor, is slated to be launched late January. Ubislate 7 is set to have a 700 Mhz processor compared to the 366 MHz processor in Aakash. Ubislate 7 will be priced at Rs 3000 for sale online. 

 

Datawind though seems to be struggling with customer service issues for online retail, even though the sale is only for a limited number of tablets. 

 

According to sources, the Indian government is also planning to provide a new specification for Aakash, which may come with a faster processor and better battery life. The current version of Aakash has a battery life of about 1.5 hours. An email to the Ministry of Human Resource and Development, which is supplying the tablets to schools and colleges remained unanswered. 

 

The government till now procured only 10,000 tablets. It has still not procured the remaining 90,000 tablets for distribution in schools and colleges, even as other nations have expressed interest to the government for similar low cost computing initiatives. 

 

(Economic Times)