India launches $35 tablet device

8,500 colleges signed up

The Indian Government has confirmed months of rumours by announcing that it is releasing a tablet computing device which it hopes will eventually sell to students for $10.

The Sakshat touch-screen tablet currently costs $35 to make but the Human Resources  Minister of the Union of India said at the launch yesterday that he hoped collaboration with manufacturing partners could see that cost drop to $20. Eventualy he hoped that volume of scale would see the price fall further to $10 per unit.

No official specifications have been announced for the device but it has a seven-inch touch screen and is most likely powered by and ARM-designed SoC and will probably run a browser-centric OS based on Android or Linux.

A web portal has already been set up to support the device which contains more than 500 'lessons' for the students of the 8,500 Indian colleges which have already signed up to the Sakshat project.