BANGALORE, India -- The proposed low-cost tablet foreducational purposes, "Aakash" (or sky) officially launched inOctober, has been mired in controversy from the start.
Monday (April 16), the situation got even more complicatedwith Datawind Ltd, the original winner of the Aakash contract, stating that thecompany is still in the running for the second and better version of the $35tablet.
Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind, said some sections ofthe media were sensationalizing the company in a negative manner while othershave reported that Quad Electronics Pvt. Ltd., the Hyderabad-based contractmanufacturer building the tablet for Datawind, has gone to court to claim itsrightful dues.
Datawind appointed Quad to make the tablets on its behalf.But Datawind retained the tablet's intellectual property.
"There have been reports in a section of media aboutDatawind being served a legal notice for non-payment of dues by its assemblypartner Quad Electronics Solutions," Tuli said. "The assemblerfurther alleges that Datawind could not work with the government and did notabide by the contract with Quad. The assembler vendor also accuses Datawind ofreneging on its promises to customers."
According to Tuli, Quad breached Datawind's intellectualproperty, circumvented Datawind's relationship with the Indian Institute ofTechnology-Rajasthan (IIT-R), signed a direct memorandum of understanding withIIT-R and sold its Aakash inventory on the open market. "Datawind hassince appointed new partners to assemble the tablet," Tuli said.
Currently, however, the situation is a murky one. KapilSibal, the minister for communications and information technology had lastmonth said that Datawind is out of the running for the improved version of theproduct, but Indian ministers are known to go back on their word.
A representative of one Indian company that is a contenderin case a fresh contract is called for said that the murkiness of the projectis so much now, and no one is sure of what the status of the project is atpresent.
So, even as several new companies have announced theirtablets at various prices for the Indian market -- encouraged by the enthusiasmevident at the launch of the Aakash -- it could be too early to dismiss Tuli'sstatement that "Datawind has full confidence of the Government and isworking on the second generation of the tablet."
Meanwhile, according to Naveen Mishra, lead telecom analystat Cybermedia Research, about 475,000 media tablets were sold in India during2011.
"In India the media tablet has very quickly metamorphosedfrom being a 'premium' or 'luxury' product for the select few, to one that hasappeal to a wide range of customer segments such as business executives,advertising and media professionals and students, to name a few," Mishraadded.
This story was originally posted by EETimes.
