14 DAY TRIAL // The Aakash tablet which gained worldwide fame for its price of $35 / 27 Euro may end up not bearing any price tag at all.
According to a report by IndiaToday, the Indian government wants to distribute the product for free to students of learning institutions.
It is unclear if this means all institutions or just some of those that will integrate the slate into their teaching practices.
The government will pay 50% subsidy for each model, while the rest will be accounted for by the educational institutions in question.
"We want to give Akash tablets in the hands of every student, then this will be useful," said HRD Minister Kapil Sibal.
"We had a meeting with Bharat Electronics, we are looking for manufacturing all components of the Akash tablet indigenously. Otherwise, it will not be possible to distribute it as widely as planned."
If students were to buy the Aakash at its full retail price, they would have to fork up Rs 3,515, the equivalent of $70, or 53.93 Euro.
All things considered, this is still a very low price point, even if the hardware and software specifications aren't that high.
The 7-inch tablet is powered by an admittedly modest 366 MHz processor and has Wi-Fi, 256 MB of RAM and up to 32GB storage via card slot, plus a resistive touch panel.
On that note, the device got some harsh criticism last month, courtesy of the Indian Cellular Association.
Long story short, they said that the item is too weak and outdated and that larger companies should have been commissioned instead of Datawind.
Then again, Datawind is already developing a new slate, a sort of successor to Aakash, one that will have a price of $57/43.61 Euro and somewhat higher capabilities (ARM Cotex A8 700 MHz CPU, GPRS, HD video playback). No clue if this Ubislate, as it is called, will get to be distributed for free too.