Till recently there were only very limited options if one wanted a tablet computer in India - with the exception of OlivePad, the only other options were the highly expensive Apple iPad and the moderately expensive Samsung Galaxy Tab.
August has been a month of many launches- all of them in the android space. I'm sure all technologists would've by now concluded that the mobile/tablet platforms are now entirely between android and iOS platforms. And looks like the Indian market is behaving differently from the world market - Apple is far from being the market leader here. Reliance 3G tab, Beetel Magiq, Mercury mTab are new options available at sub 13k prices, with the latter two being sub 10k. This certainly would hot up the tablet market like never before.
There is also talk of amazon too coming out with a forked version of android based tablet akin to kindle- I'm yet to know the price. I'm also hearing of spice coming out with a tablet. None of these new tablets are available yet in stores for checking out. among the tech specs of OlivePad, mTab and Magiq, I liked mTab most, at par with GalaxyTab spec at a much lower price. I wish there was a chance to try out these devices for a real feel - the tech specs may not always live up to a good user experience.
Will update the blog once I get to lay my hands on these devices at a store. Do drop in a comment if anyone of you are aware of stores having the newer devices.
How about the low cost PC being developed by the Govt of India? It seemed promising when it was shown on NDTV by Kapil Sibal... but haven't heard anything about it since then....
ReplyDeleteTo the best of my knowledge, that device, like all devices invented by academics, pegged the market price at 5k which is also the manufacturing cost without accounting for sales and marketing costs or amortising R&D costs, forget profits. The company which was entrusted with production and sales wanted to revise price to around 15k plus and then lost support from ministry
ReplyDeleteSibal like his 2g scam zero loss theory tried to achieve mileage around inventions that have never been successful to a mass market like India.
ReplyDeleteIndia isnt too worried about licensed software. But equally important about simple OS.
What would Sibal know about the unix tablets that were released and whether they would punch the Indian market or not... what is his technical qualification to evaluate tablets and their usability ? We have seen the last of it surely !