Many people in the US and Europe may not have heard of it, but the Indian made Aakash is outselling even the mighty iPad in total volume. Clearly it’s not because of its rich feature set, or novel design, it’s because, as TechCrunch points out, the Aakash sells for just $35.
Originally, the idea was for the Indian government to team up with an Indian hi-tech firm to make a notepad that students could use in college. All part of a push by the Indian government to make it easier for Indian students to succeed, and then to go out into the world with a college education, thus bumping up the quality of life for a large number of people. A great idea, when you consider that India currently still has more people living near starvation than any other country in the world.
But, as Sriram Vadlamani, writing for Asian Correspondent, points out, the tech firms involved got a little greedy and as a result began working with an outside company from Taiwan to help build the little notepads, which run Google’s Android operating system and have just a fraction of the ram of most other notepads. The results was a crush by users throughout India placing orders for a notepad they believed would be every bit as good as those made outside the country, but available to them at a fraction of the price due to a government subsidy.
As a result, TechCrunch says, orders for the Aakash have totaled over a million and a half in just the first week of sales, with thousands more coming in every minute, since customers can order the notepad online.
What’s not clear just yet is whether all those orders will translate to actual sales, as the order form doesn’t require a credit card, which means anyone that wants to order one can, regardless of whether they can afford to pay the low cost of the device or not. But that might be beside the point, the real news here is that virtually anyone in India will be able to buy one of the notepads for what amounts to the price of lunch for two in the United States, and will then be able to join in the technical revolution that was inspired by first personal computers, and now portable devices, which can be used, via free Wi-Fi hot spots, to cruise the web, attend classes virtually or apply for jobs.
The Aakash follows on the heels of the Tata Nano, the worlds’ cheapest car also made and sold in India, though it wasn’t subsidized by the government, the bottom line is the same; providing technology for the hundreds of millions of people in India who would have to go without otherwise.