Acrossworld launches low cost tablet for students [yet another?]

Its raining cheap tablets in India - In last couple of weeks alone I have heard of about 5 new tablets launched all under USD 100 price range.

Acrossworld, a Bangalore / Boston based company providing SAAS services to schools and colleges have now announced launch of its low-cost tablet PC for Rs. 5000/-. The tablet called ATab has been launched in association with Delhi-based Go-Tech.

According to the press release, tablet will come with a 7” TFT touchscreen, 1.1 GHz processor,    512MB RAM, 2GB internal memory with option of expanding it to 16 GB. It has an USB external dongle support.

The cost of Rs. 5000 includes 3 year unlimited access to AcrossWorld’s Education Technology Platform – EducationBridge^TM that allows allows academic institutions, teachers and students to use a variety of content elements including Open Content, Open Educational Resources, Legacy Content and proprietary content sources.

ATab will be available in several color options that are expected to appeal to the younger generation.

The cheap tablet market is already getting quite saturated – Already numerous companies have joined the fray for low cost tablet distribution, which includes MHRD’s Aakash as well as BSNL’s recently launched tablet. Most of the companies have made announcements about these tablets, but hardly anyone has delivered as yet.

Majority of these low cost tablets (except Aakash) are essentially Chinese hardware re-branded and sold. Only time will tell how useful these tablets are going to be especially in the field of education.