India One-Ups OLPC, Beats their $200 XO and their $99 tablet with a $35 iPad lookalike for 2011

A $35 Tablet? India Is On The Case

03:49 pm July 23, 2010 by Joshua Brockman AP

 

Kapil Sibal, India’s human resource development minister, displays the low-cost tablet that it hopes to put into production by next year.

Can you imagine a tablet computer priced less than the cost of a textbook?

It may soon be a reality. The Indian government unveiled a $35 prototype of a touch-screen tablet for students that could be a game changer in the consumer electronics world. That’s because it would be the world’s cheapest if it goes into production, according to the Guardian.

…

India’s human resource development minister, Kapil Sibal, said on Friday that the government is already in discussions with manufacturers to produce the device by 2011. He called the device India’s “answer to MIT’s $100 computer.”

via npr.org

Hm… this is an interesting development.

While it’d be great to get my hands on such a cheap tablet, one of the commenters on the NPR post makes a good point:

liam stockwell (liamaniac) wrote:

I can’t help but think it has the same, extremely detrimental draw-backs of every other sub-priced…anything. “Who is getting taken advantage of in order to produce this?”

Sat Jul 24 11:44:10 2010

I don’t mind spending a couple hundred on something like this as long as it’s got the same (or similar) specs as the iPad AND poor people in 3rd world countries aren’t exploited to death to bring me the damn device.

And I’ve heard/read a bit about what India is like and it worries me when I see electronics with this tiny-ass price point.  But hey, if they can produce it morally, I’d be happy to pick one up.  Maybe I can run Sugar on it! ;)