India Touchscreen Tablet of $35 – iPad Clone

A touchscreen tablet was unveiled in India today and the gadget costs only $35. Some will call it an iPad clone but the device is only a touchscreen tablet and is not really aimed to be a clone of iPad. The $35 basic touchscreen tablet is mostly aimed to students.

After the Nano Car, and the $16 water purifier, India now brings us an innovative touchscreen tablet which can be used for web browsing, video conferencing and also common functions like word processing, spreadsheets and others.

The touchscreen tablet also has a solar power option. According to the human resource development minister Kapil Sibal, this new touchscreen tablet is an answer to MIT’s $100 computer. The tablet is expected to be in production phase by 2011.

In 2005, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab proposed a $100 laptop for developing countries. However, India rejected the offer considering it as being too expensive even at $100. This touchscreen tablet of $35 is supposedly the cheaper option India has developed in reply to the MIT offer.

India is planning to subsidize the cost of the tablet for its students and to bring the purchase price down to around $20.