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Foreign firms keen to manufacture Aakash 2
in India: Sibal
Wednesday April 18, 2012 09:14:54 AM,
IANS
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New Delhi:
Communications Minister Kapil Sibal Tuesday said many foreign
companies have shown interest in manufacturing the second version
of the low-cost tablet Aakash 2 in India.
"We have invited companies from across the world for manufacturing
and many are ready to manufacture it here," Sibal told reporters
on the sidelines of the inauguration of World IT Forum 2012.
"Currently we are looking at the design and other parameters.
After we freeze the design and technology, manufacturing will take
place. The second version of Aakash will be launched in May," he
added.
The announcement comes even as Canadian firm Datawind, which has
been manufacturing Aakash, got into a spat with the
Hyderabad-based assembler of the tablet, Quad Electronics, in the
last few months.
Quad has reportedly alleged that it has not got its payments for
the initial order of assembling 20,000 tablets.
Datawind on the other hand said that Quad breached Datawind's
intellectual property, circumvented their relationship with IIT-Rajasthan,
signed an agreement with them and then sold off their inventory in
the open market.
Aakash 2 is expected to have three times more powerful processor
and the resistive touch screen of the older version will be
changed to capacitive touch screen. The device which was earlier
expected to be launched in April will also become expensive
compared to the earlier version which was priced at $35.
Talking about empowering the masses with 3G and 4G services, Sibal
said these services would have limited access to the masses unless
the government ensures that the cost of these devices go down.
"We must develop manufacturing in India," he said while
inaugurating the two day forum which will focus on use of ICT in
agriculture, education, health and e-Governance, within the
overall theme of 'ICT for Sustainable Human Development'.
The forum will discuss the role of IT interventions in bringing
about greater transparency in governance, issues of privacy and
security while dealing with public databases, financial inclusion
and ways of leveraging wireless technologies.
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