Soon new budget tablets could appear in stores worldwide: this is the promise coming from India, speaking of a truly negligible outlay to buy one. The project to provide 25-euro tablets has already started.
I tablet are the new object of desire for those who love technology and mobile tech experiences. Discouraging many from buying one, however, is the issue ofprice:cheap tablets are currently nowhere to be seen, except for some clones arriving from China which still often cost at least 100 euros, if not something more.
Comforting news on the upcoming release of affordable tablets within everyone’s reach comes from India: it isAzim Premji, the man at the head ofWipro, who is talking about it openly.
Technicians and engineers in the laboratories of the Indian hi-tech company are reportedly already at work to provide at least the first prototype by the first quarter of 2012.
The challenge is arduous: not sacrificing quality but lowering production costs is the game currently being played, given that at the moment – according to
Premji – everytablet that comes off the assembly line has a price of no less than 50 to 60 euros.
For this reason,Wipro is focusing heavily onnanotechnology, in collaboration with a specialized Belgian company,Imec: by managing to find the right combination of “hi-tech miniatures,” it might be possible to further reduce production costs, bringing them close to the figure promised by Premji.
If the project were truly to take shape and bringcheap tablets to the market for around 25 euros, it would undoubtedly be an epoch-making breakthrough in the world of technology: the tablet would probably become more widespread than the PC, even in countries with less than booming economies.
Thelow-cost tablet could gain traction massively and rapidly, even among the youngest, much like an advanced toy, as happened years ago with handheld video games.
A scenario that would undoubtedly entice manufacturers but which, despite leveraging the much lower price, probably wouldn’t in any way erode the dominance ofiPad, strong with its slice of Apple fans.
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