Intended for Education, India’s Aakash 2 is the World’s Cheapest Tablet PC

By David Tobia
November 30, 2012

The Aakash 2 is a $20, 7-inch tablet developed by Indian company Datawind. According to Quartz, the device is “almost as capable” as the Nexus 7 tablet while selling for just one fifth the price of Google’s device.
CEO Suneet Tuli admits the hardware is “nothing too extraordinary,” since “the key focus is breaking that price barrier.”
There is a 4 million order backlog in India for the device, but Tuli believes his company will fill these orders. He also predicts that within a year there will be similar devices on the global market for under $50.
The device is targeted for Indian students, as Datawind sells the device for $40 to the Indian government, which then either gives them to students or re-sells them for $20.
“This may not be the perfect initial deployment, but the vision isn’t just for engineering students, the vision is from engineering students all the way down to all 220 million students, or potentially 360 million Indian kids across the country that should be in school,” Tuli notes.
The tablet has “standard Android apps” as well as ebooks and other educational applications. The Quartz post includes a 7-minute video in which Tuli discusses the tablet.

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