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
Apple’s iPad sales break the two million mark
• Apple sells more than two million iPads in less than two months • iPad to launch in nine more countries, including Ireland, in July • Analysts say biggest market is US, followed by France and UK Apple today said it has sold two million iPads, less than two months after launching the touchscreen tablet in the US, much faster than predicted. This is despite the fact the company had to delay the device's international launch by a month because it could not keep up with demand. On Friday, the iPad, which combines the mobility of a smartphone with the speed of a laptop, finally went on sale in the UK, and also launched in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland. The original UK launch date had been set for late April. The 32GB iPad, with its 24.5cm (9.7in) touchscreen, looks like an enlarged iPhone and costs £499, while the 64GB version costs £599. It will go on sale in nine more countries next month, including Ireland, and analysts at RBC Capital Markets estimated that by the end of the year, over eight million units will have been sold worldwide. The success of the gadget has underlined the renaissance of Apple, which last week overtook Microsoft as the biggest technology company in the world by market capitalisation. Apple's statement last night did not give a breakdown of the sales. Mike Abramsky, an analyst with RBC in Toronto, estimated the US will account for 57% of sales, with France and the UK being the next two biggest markets, where he predicted 805,000 and 585,000 will be sold this year. Analyst Daniel Ernst of Hudson Square Research told Reuters last month that he had estimated sales for the three months from April to the end of June at 1.25m. It took just under a month for Apple to notch up one million sales of the iPad, making it more popular than the iPhone, which took 74 days to hit the same figure in 2007. Apple has not announced sales targets for the iPad. At the launch of the iPhone in 2007, chief executive Steve Jobs said he hoped to sell 10m by the end of 2008 – it sold 16m. The iPad has already attracted a cult following among Apple enthusiasts. Stephen Fry said in Time magazine he was "not prepared for how instant the relationship I formed with the device would be", and David Pogue in the New York Times said it was "designed and built by a bunch of perfectionists". Fry queued in the rain with other Apple enthusiasts outside the company's Regent Street store when the gadget went on sale last week, even though he already owns a device. He said he was "completing the circle", having been in San Francisco when Apple announced the device in January, and present at the US launch in April: "There's a camaraderie among Apple users, particularly long-serving ones – we remember in 1997 when we were being laughed at and told we would only get spare parts in hobby shops because the company was absolutely on the floor. "I'm sure a lot of people will mock it as being some sort of pseudo-religious or cult atmosphere, but it's just genuine enthusiasm." Before it went on sale in the UK, demand was so intense that people tried to order it by using forwarding companies with offices in the US.
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Apple's iPad sales break the two million mark
Video: Stephen Fry collects his iPad and gives his verdict
Author and broadcaster Stephen Fry was among the crowds waiting to get an iPad from the Apple store on launch day. He gives his verdict on Steve Jobs's latest innovation
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Video: Stephen Fry collects his iPad and gives his verdict
Apple iPad worldwide launch
The internatonal Apple iPad launch was marked by long queues and excited early adopters
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Apple iPad worldwide launch
Nvidia shows new iPad-topping Tegra 2 tablet prototype
Tablet computers based on Google's Android operating system are starting to look more viable in the run up to the Computex trade show, and Nvidia's new prototype shows the sort of thing we can expect Nvidia has been showing off a new Android touch-screen tablet powered by its Tegra 2 processor, albeit only running an American football game (BackBreaker by Natural Motion), rather than showing the full user interface. It's a generation ahead of Apple's iPad in using a dual-core ARM Cortex 9 processor, with a lot more memory (1GB), a front-facing webcam and microphone, and a selection of ports. These include a MicroSD card slot and two USB ports, which are sadly lacking on the iPad.
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Nvidia shows new iPad-topping Tegra 2 tablet prototype
Tech Weekly podcast: A digital election, the JooJoo and Joseph Menn on cybercrime
On this week's programme, we look back on the past 14 days of politics, and the uncomfortable love triangle that unfolded between the three main party leaders. Their allegiances flipped faster than the MP housing market, and we've been watching it all on the web
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Tech Weekly podcast: A digital election, the JooJoo and Joseph Menn on cybercrime
Tech Weekly: The iPad analysed and Amazon’s ebook war
There's an iPad flavour to most of this week's progamme as we deconstruct the most anticipated launch of 2010. Was the launch of Apple's iPad a whole lot of hot air or the next evolution in gadgetry? The debate begins as author and technology commentator Nick Carr joins us to debate the highs and the lows of the next must-have gadget, and Bobbie Johnson describes getting his hands on the iPad. The studio is also buzzing with the escalating row between publishing house Macmillan and Amazon . Did the virtual bookseller drawn a line in the sand by removing all of Macmillan's books from its shelves at the weekend? Was the launch of the iPad a contributing factor
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Tech Weekly: The iPad analysed and Amazon's ebook war
Charlie Brooker | iPad therefore iWant? Probably. Why? iDunno
Apple pretends it will make your life more efficient. Come off it.
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Charlie Brooker | iPad therefore iWant? Probably. Why? iDunno
Thanks, Mr Jobs, for my new iNanny | Jemima Kiss
They said the iPod would never last, so only a fool would bet against the success of the iPad "A ll this hype for something so ridiculous! Why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!" "It won't sell. It will be killed off." "The reality distortion field is starting to warp Steve Jobs's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off." It's reassuring to know that some things never change: those were comments made on Apple fan sites as the first iPod was released in October 2001. Despite initial doubts, the iPod has become the symbol for seismic change, and very much to the benefit of Apple. The "iPod effect" boosted sales of its computers and also successfully staked out a lucrative chunk of the nascent digital music market by locking consumers into its own music store – effectively stealing the future from under the noses of the old music industry. Less than nine years later, Apple has sold 250m iPods. So what of the iPad ? Apple did no formal promotion ahead of the launch
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Thanks, Mr Jobs, for my new iNanny | Jemima Kiss
After the iPad, what unicorns are there for Apple to unleash?
We've had the iPhone, and now we've got the iPad. But that won't stop the fans inventing fresh products or services that theyr'e sure Apple has hidden in the cupboard OK, so people have drooled endlessly over the iPad. Yes, we've seen it. But it's time to lift our eyes a little higher and ask: how many unicorns does Apple have left in the cupboard? The unicorns in question being the unreleased but much-rumoured products or services we are always told Apple is "just about" to announce. Unlike many companies, it has a devoted following, who revere the products that it does release so highly that they then go on and make up their own that they'd like it to release in turn. In some cases, that's based on reality. For years, there were rumours that Apple, whose computers used processors from Motorola – and whose software was thus incompatible with processors made by Intel, which dominates the field – was secretly producing Intel-compatible versions of its products. The whispers said the project was called "Marklar". In March 2000 Wifredo Sanchez, an Apple software developer, posted a little note on the Apple Darwin bulletin board saying: "Wednesday – the whole thing compiled for the first time for both PowerPC and Intel." And then in 2005 Steve Jobs announced that Apple was abandoning Motorola – the chips were falling behind Moore's Law – and shifting to Intel. Even before then, I'd been in press conferences where Steve Jobs had been asked what "iPhone" was. (The first time was probably 2003.) Jobs crinkled up his face in disdain. "Iphone?" he said
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After the iPad, what unicorns are there for Apple to unleash?