Last year, the world’s cheapest Tablet was introduced by the students of IIT, Rajasthan, with conglomeration of the Canadian company Datawind. Later, the government of India subsidized the Tablet for just INR 2,250 t make it much more affordable for Indian students. Though, Datawind announced that Aakash Tablet would be launched in the retail stores by the end of November last year, the company is yet to make Tablet available in retail store even after missing three deadlines in a row. The government of India proposed 100,000 Tablets to the Canadian company for colleges and schools, but, it managed to provide just 10,000 Aakash Tablets. The company is currently unable to provide surplus demand of Tablets in the country.
Today, The Mobile Indian has reportedly stated that BSNL is going to introduce “Penta IS701R” Tablet in retail stores across the country by March 1 with the collaboration of Noida-based Pental Technologies. BSNL is going to release low-price Tablet “Penta IS701R” with Wi-Fi at the nominal price of $71.01 (INR 3,499).
Managing Director of Pantel Technologies—Virendra Singh—said, “We have the shipments ready and we will definitely see to it that our tablet reaches the store by March 1.”
Presently, Datawind is also trying to upgrade its current version of Aakash Tablet, but user will have to pay $10 (INR 500) extra. The upgraded version—Ubislate 7—will have ARM 11 366 MHZ processor.
The entry level price for Penta IS701R model will be $71.01 (INR 3,499) and will also come with the data plan of 5GB for 60 days. The entry level price of BSNL Tablet is somewhat nearly $10 (INR 500) more than Aakash Tablet. But, I don’t think the Penta IS701R expanses more, because the company is going to provide 5GB of data access free for 60 days. If users own Aakash Tablet they also need to pay nearly $2 (INR 99) but can accesses 2 GB of data only.
The company has also introduced two other models with little different specifications at $223 (INR 10,999) and $274 (INR 13,500) respectively. The BSNL’s new Tablet will have additional HDMI port, through which HDTV could easily be connected. The tablet will have touch screen resolution of 800×600 pixels with the aspect ratio of 16:9.
Overall, BSNL’s new Tablet is undoubtedly non-vulnerable than Aakash Tablet in any aspect. In addition to this, India’s leading telecom vendor is offering the Tablet at retail stores by March 1. The specification is nearly analogous to each other, but in some aspect, the BSNL’s Tablet is dominating over Aakash Tablet. Anyway, Datawind is unable to fulfill the surplus demand alone and still there’s a huge room for “Penta IS701R” Tablet in Indian Market.
