$35 Indian Tablet Has Until March 31st To Ship or Be Cancelled

damitr writes "With a lot of fanfare the Indian Government had launched a $35 tablet named Aakash (The Sky). Despite skepticism, the government went ahead with the project. But delays in production and deployment of the tablet have left the project in risk of failure. The manufacturer has been unable to supply the required 100,000 units, and a deadline of March 31 has been set. The new minister Pallam Raju says: 'Aakash is only a tablet... there are other such devices as well. While work will continue to develop it and increase its productivity, manufacturing is obviously a problem.'" For what it's worth, they did manage to ship 17,000 of them. It looks like meeting the deadline is impossible and the $35 tablet is dead.

Comments

Easy solution

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

They should just outsource production to Ind... no wait...

Re:Easy solution

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Curiously, they handed it to a London-headquartered Canadian firm(with a slightly... unenviable... reputation for order fulfillment), who then handed the manufacturing side back to an Indian firm. No word on whether the Indian firm is mostly a thin shell of management and a few field engineers who exist to look over the shoulders of the Chinese sub-subcontractors to keep them from swapping in cheaper parts when nobody is looking...

Too many cooks, etc.

Re:Easy solution

[unixisc]

Looks like everybody is out to demonstrate how good they are at outsourcing. Just wait until the Chinese and Africans too get in on the act - then we might see jobs coming back to the US

And the Indian government was involved in creating a tablet because....?

Re:Easy solution

[guttentag]

No word on whether the Indian firm is mostly a thin shell of management and a few field engineers who exist to look over the shoulders of the Chinese sub-subcontractors to keep them from swapping in cheaper parts when nobody is looking...

At $35 for a 7" touchscreen tablet, how much cheaper can you get on parts? A Fisher-Price "tablet" (no touch screen, no shift key, has a "10" key instead of a "0," but it does have a light-up LCD screen that changes color) costs $25, and even then consumers in the two-to-five-year-old bracket are refusing to use it because they keys are too cheaply made. What "cheaper parts" could the sub-subcontractors possibly swap in? Horse meat? Melamine?

I can see the reviews now: "Bought these for my kids, but they leak some kind of liquid. Kids won't touch them, but the cat loved it. The cat's dead now, vet said his kidneys failed, so at least I'm saving money on cat food."

Re:Easy solution

[Joce640k]

Have you seen the wholesale price of tablets in China?

http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=android+tablet

Replace the capacitive screens with something cheaper, buy in bulk, and you're almost at $35.

Re:Easy solution

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Looks like everybody is out to demonstrate how good they are at outsourcing. Just wait until the Chinese and Africans too get in on the act - then we might see jobs coming back to the US

And the Indian government was involved in creating a tablet because....?

The Indian government's interest in all this had something to do with an e-textbook initiative. Apparently their dead-tree versions are seriously uneven in terms of age and availability, so the prospect of something that could be updated more easily and be all 21st century and stuff was attractive.

What is somewhat less clear is why this got them involved in hardware, rather than just software and content. There are only about a zillion Chinese OEMs slitting each other's throats to build slightly cheaper crap-tablets, and many of them produce quite similar designs around a handful of cheap SoCs. Sure, doing platform validation is a pain in the ass; but they could have had multiple, interchangeable, vendors eating out of the palm of their hand instead of having one pet fuckup...

Re:Easy solution

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

$35 was the target subsidized price. The target actual price was around twice that(which is pretty much the going rate for 7 inch tablets of unknown-but-suspect quality from nameless pacific rim OEMS).

Re:Easy solution

[LordLimecat]

I imagine if you replaced the CPU with some gravel, you could drive the price even closer to the target!

No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

It's engineers and target customers were too busy shitting in the streets to bother.

Re:Before trolling starts...

[Joce640k]

I really do believe "you get what you paid for,"

If you're a third-worlder then $35 is a lot.

Re:Before trolling starts...

[SailorSpork]

I really do believe "you get what you paid for," but then, I'm reminded of the story of golf ball finders a British con artist was selling as "bomb detectors" for several thousand dollars each.

That's the opposite of "you get what you paid for." It's called "Marketing."

Re:IeBay them

[CohibaVancouver]

If the government don't buy them,I am sure hobbyists and hackers around the world would find use for them if they were only $35 each.

You wouldn't be able to sell them to individuals for $35 - Supply chains, distribution, packaging, returns, payment processing... All would drive up the cost. Price point would probably be $79 or so which, surprise surprise, is what a cheapo consumer Chinese tablet sells for.

Re:Before trolling starts...

[guttentag]

That's the opposite of "you get what you paid for." It's called "Marketing."

I think you misunderstood. Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 190a: "When you don't get what you think you paid for, then you paid for marketing, and you got what paid for." It's a sub-rule of Rule 190: "Hear all, trust nothing."

Re:You get what you pay for

[bill_mcgonigle]

At an expected price of only $35, one should expect what has happened.

You can currently source a capacitive multitouch ICS device with a camera and fast SoC from eBay for $65 delivered to your door, first-world, quantity one. Could an order of 100,000 units with a resistive screen, without any middlemen get that down to $35? It seems entirely do-able. It's not going to be a great device, but better than no device.