“A ‘$35’ computer launched last year in India as the world’s cheapest tablet has run into problems and companies will be invited to bid again to make the device after complaints of poor performance and hiccups rolling out a pilot model,” Frank Jack Daniel reports for Reuters.
“Products such as Apple Inc’s iPad are beyond the reach even of many in the fast-growing middle class. The locally assembled machine has a cost price of around $50 and was to be sold to students by the government for $35,” The Man With Three First Names reports. “But only 10,000 units have been shipped since October. The relationship between the device’s manufacturer, DataWind, and a government research institute soured amid complaints by test users that the processor was too slow, the battery life short and the resistive touch screen hard to use.”
TMWTFN reports, “A small London-based company, DataWind developed the tablet with the Indian Institute of Technology. The company said the institute had changed the specifications late last year and now wanted a device that could meet U.S. military durability requirement for the same rock-bottom price. ‘Among other things that requires the device to take 4 inches an hour of sustained rain,’ DataWind CEO Suneet Singh told Reuters.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The entire world has gone batshit insane.
We await The New York Slimes‘ exposé on the plight of the factory workers’ at the $35 Indian tablet assembly line with bated breath.