EDIT: Kapil Sibal and the Indian Vaporware
Its been almost 2 full years since the announcement of the 20$ Tablet for the Indian market which has come and gone into release cycle time and again. From changing vendors to dropping manufacturers,Why is Kapil Sibal good at making excuses?
The tablet deemed to be an Indian product from the core, yet manufactured in China? HCL was the first company to refuse the manufacture of this tablet soon to be followed by Wipro, Satyam and others. The manufacturers all possibly gave up on the possibility of such a device, why make it impossible for a device to exist, and if you launch one 3 years later what is the point anyway.
A year ago a touchscreen tablet with Android 2.1 and a resistive touchscreen made sense, the recent news showed a device with a capacitive screen and other bits such as WiFi and USB ports etc. Also news upped the OS to Android 2.2. But is it really happening ? The usual bits are in place and excuses follow. The govt. gave a grant of several hundred crore to the project, an undisclosed amount, but to our dismay we could neither get details of the grant or what actually happened to the device.
A tablet that has touchscreen, WiFi and Android may or may not be able to educate the kids of today. But will definitely be a source of entertainment to them. low price- large screen Angry Birds anyone? There goes the education system down the drain.
Post this discussion the biggest question remains : whether or not the device would be even capable of playing Angry birds? Imagine you pull on the bird and it just gets stuck in mid air!
When we tried to contact Mr. Sibal’s office to get a comment, we got a polite reminder of how the country’s politics are more important
Abhi Anna Hazare is taking too much time!, whatever the Govt. wants to do-will do. You please mind your own business”
-Refused to tell us name – Assistant at Kapil Sibal’s Office
Why does “Anna Hazare” have anything to do with the Launch of a tablet that was supposed to happen last year. If anything the protests should speed up the process not slow it down.
Fortunately for us China is a wonderful country and many companies have started to bring in tablets in the price range of 5-10 thousand rupees. The HCL and Beetel Tablets cost 10,000 and the Reliance tab costs 12,999. With pricing already dropping daily, we can expect a good 2000-3000 tablet before the govt. even begins to allot this “Ration” based tablet. Which will probably end up going to “Politician and Family” as Diwali Gifts.
Here is a “Poof” to the Sakshat Tablet for India. Come on Mr. Sibal we expect a better result with a IT oriented country.
