India’s $35 tablet: a stalled revolution | Suhasini Sakhare

India's new $35 tablet computer needs manufacturing success and demand if it is to revolutionise IT literacy – it has neither Kapil Sibal, India's minister for human resource development, recently announced that Indian scientists had developed a tablet computer that could be manufactured for just $35 . The device has been developed primarily for students and is part of the government's ambitious plan to connect 2,5000 Indian colleges with broadband. The thrust is no doubt linked to MIT's 2005 offer to Asia to make available know-how for building $100 laptops . But it needs two critical support struts – manufacturing success and demand – to be successful. On the manufacturing side, the bill of materials currently going into the tablet has come up to $47. This does not include labour, supply chain costs or profit. Even if the government sticks to its current stance of subsidising the product by $15 it is unlikely to retail at $35, let alone the $20 the government eventually hopes to sell it at.

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India's $35 tablet: a stalled revolution | Suhasini Sakhare

Video: India unveils world’s cheapest ‘laptop’

The $35 device is aimed at university students – and the price could yet fall further

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Video: India unveils world's cheapest 'laptop'

India unveils ‘laptop’ costing $35

Touchscreen computing device aimed at students is expected to be rolled out to higher education institutions from 2011 India has come up with the world's cheapest "laptop", a touchscreen computing device that costs $35 (£23). India's human resource development minister Kapil Sibal this week unveiled the low-cost computing device that is designed for students, saying his department had started talks with global manufacturers to start mass production. "We have reached a (developmental) stage that today; the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything," he told a news conference in New Delhi. He said the touchscreen gadget was packed with web browers, PDF reader and video conferencing facilities, but its hardware was created with sufficient flexibility to incorporate new components according to user requirement. Sibal said the Linux-based device was expected to be introduced to higher education institutions from 2011 but the aim was to drop the price further to $20 and ultimately to $10. The device was developed by research teams at India's premier technological institutes, the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science. India spends about 3% of its annual budget on school education and has improved its literacy rates to over 64% of its population of 1.2 billion. However, studies have shown many students can barely read or write and most state-run schools have inadequate facilities. India Computing guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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India unveils 'laptop' costing $35

Virus phone scam being run from call centres in India

Britons targeted by cold callers pretending to be from Microsoft phoning to fix a fake computer problem The scam always starts the same way: the phone rings at someone's home, and the caller – usually with an Indian accent – asks for the householder, quoting their name and address before saying "I'm calling for Microsoft. We've had a report from your internet service provider of serious virus problems from your computer." Dire forecasts are made that if the problem is not solved, the computer will become unusable. The puzzled owner is then directed to their computer, and asked to open a program called "Windows Event Viewer".

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Virus phone scam being run from call centres in India

$10 laptop a damp squib, says Times of India

When my colleague Randeep Ramesh reported on India to unveil the £7 laptop , then I guessed it would be something like the old Tandy 100 much loved, in its day, by journalists. In other words, it would be a simple text-based machine with a four- or eight-line LCD display and a flat keyboard.

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$10 laptop a damp squib, says Times of India