HCL to bid for next generation Aakash tablet

Whether Aakash impressed the masses or not, evidently the makers of Aakash didn’t incur any losses. Even in our quest for alternatives to the Aakash, we didn’t find any tablet that could match its price. Although there have been some disagreements between the HRD Ministry with Datawind and IIT-Rajasthan, there have been other prospective makers bidding for the upgraded version of the Aakash. Followed by reports about the Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) preparing to bid for the Aakash 2 deal, Daily Bhaskar now reveals that HCL has expressed its interest in bidding for the Aakash 2, too.

Visibly pleased students with the Aakash tablet at the launch

HCL Info. is said to offer its expertise in manufacturing, as the demand for Aakash has surpassed the million mark, disclosed a senior company official at the ISA Vision Summit 2012. Sibal had earlier stated that the government will soon launch the successor to the world’s cheapest tablet. The new generation Aakash is expected to be faster and more efficient. 

“Today Electronics is the largest and fastest growing manufacturing industry in the world. Current global hardware production is around $ US 1.75 trillion and by 2020 it is going to grow up to $ US 2.4 trillion. On the domestic front, electronic driven industry has emerged as the contributor to national economy. We can develop semiconductor manufacturing in India since we have the chip design services available here and enormous high quality human resource. We should be able to leverage that to ensure that we can develop the semiconductor manufacturing sector in India,” he added.

He also said that the price of the tablet will be lowered, once the order for the devices increases. The Ministry has decided that the tender procedures for the roll-out of the upgraded Aakash tablet will now be looked upon by the Department of Information Technology (DIT). IIT Rajasthan is said to lose the upgraded Aakash deal.

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