Submitted by India’s Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal unveiled a touchscreen tablet that he claims they will be able to produce for just $35. The device is being aimed at students, and seems to be taking the One Laptop Per Child idea and running with it. “Despite the price, users will get a touch-screen, a PDF reader and a webcam for video conferencing. There has been no confirmation of its specifications but reports suggest 2GB of memory, Wi-Fi and Ethernet and power consumption at just 2W. Naturally, the device will run Linux.”The device was developed by the the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science as part of a national initiative to provide technology to the educational system. If the R&D has already been done, and that substantial capital expenditure doesn’t need to be built into the price, and it’ll be using a Free operating system, it’s not too far-fetched to claim that the hardware could be built for $35. The iPhone costs less than $180 to make, and it’s substantially smaller, more powerful, and more feature-rich.
I think that the best thing that could happen to this project would be to make these devices widely available to enthusiasts in the developed world as soon as possible, at a small profit. At under $50, a lot of geeks would buy them as curiosities, and I’d bet that a robust hacker culture would develop around them. Not only would some of that enthusiasm result in software and hardware improvements that could be folded back into future versions of the $35 device, but the more people out there using these, the more meaningful students’ work with them would be, since they would be learning with a device that’s popular with hackers worldwide.
On the OS front, I can see dozens of customized Linux distros being released for this device, to serve various purposes, from scientific instruments to media players, which would only make the device’s original aim of improving technical education for India’s students more easily achievable.
I think it is very far fetched.
I agree with you. There’s a big subsidy in the R&D, then another subsidy in the fact that it would presumably be distributed without a profit motive. But if you added up the cost of components, plus assembly, it’s possible you could get to $35.
There’s no doubt that it’s “subsidized”, if you take a look at the hardware cost breakdown at such sites as Engadget.com there’s no way this hardware can be manufactured at those costs. Just the screen exceeds the cost for the whole machine. We “GEOS, GeoWorks, Breadbox Ensemble” fans have been searching long and hard for a low-powered platform where this awesome technology could shine (particularly targeted at low income schools, communities and countries) and time and again realize there’s no way to deliver the hardware (AND) software to deliver an under $100 system, props go out to the OLPC folks for even getting within a couple hundred dollars.
Geos is NOT open source and use a “costly” (not free as in free beer) licensing scheme that cannot extend to a device below 50$ :/ Be it good technology or not…
Linux is FOSS and adaptable to foreign and/or exotic hardware architechture, so do Haiku, but not Geos !
Kochise
BTW, have you considered using the BeagleBoard ? RiscOS has been ported successfully to it, why not doing the same with your favorite OS ?
Kochise
Beagleboard, starting at “only” $149…
Man, are there computers based on this board?
The AlwaysInnovating TouchBook was originally prototyped on the beagleboard.
I do believe that TI or someone else is manufacturing the custom board they now use (although it is compatible with the beagle) in the shipping product.
The beagleboard is intended as a prototyping platform, not a consumer device.
Personally, I find that a bit of a shame. If the Haiku port to ARM ever matures, I’d be -really- interested in building Haiku boxen based off the Beagle XM board.
Wholesale prices for 7″ analog LCD panels in quantity was about $15 US each back in 2008… That was just a raw panel though, no touch screen. I don’t know what they go for now – its hard to find out actual pricing for this kind of stuff unless you are an actual buyer.
Just saying $35 is within the realm of possibility for actual production cost if component suppliers are carefully selected – which is all that is claimed in the article. They probably have to hit a volume target to lock in their pricing though.
There are already quite a few touchscreen tablets selling at around $100 as mentioned here:
http://www.osnews.com/comments/23605
You have to figure they would not bother unless they can make at least a 10%-15% markup, so that puts production cost at $85 max. I suspect actual cost is significantly less.
Indians once said they will manufacture car for $2000… and they did it, although no one believed in it. On the other hand, version that will be allowed to drive on European roads will cost triple that much – maybe here lies the secret.
I don’t think that seatbelts or airbags are required to sell laptops. So that won’t make a difference.
Edited 2010-07-26 19:49 UTC
Well the triple price in Europe is not because the car is subsidized in India. There is considerable difference in quality of material, transportation of goods, cheap-labor and features made available in India vs Europe are.
$35 in India is Rs 1575/- and with that price producing plastic material and Display is possible, also do look closely the features it is offering.
oh really? good luck looking for a touch panel vendor with a usd 35 component cost (i presumed it IS component cost, since, legend has it, labour is dirt cheap in india).
meanwhile, we are still eagerly waiting for simputer – that much ballyhooed (or in this case, bollyhooed) pda which was supposed to be a palm killer.
“The hardware should cost 88$ to produce after a year and selling for 100$”
Yea, I hard many cheap laptop project with idealistic price before, and they never delivered the promise. But well, Negroponte is not India, wait and see.
So, when do we get to tie hundreds of these things together, and how will it perform?
From what I’ve read on other sites, I think the 2GB memory is a mistake.
I think that 2GB refers to the storage, which makes sense on a device that’s likely running Android. 2GB ram is too much for a device that is supposed to cost $35.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/35-tablet-from-india-looks-to-be…
It appears to be running Android.
Is it arm based? I guess just the x86 chipset is over 35 bucks, isn’t it?
“One mother board design was generated under Ministry^aEURTMs guidance in the B.Tech project of a student at VIT, Vellore. The cost of bill of material worked to 47 $ at that point of time.”
From the press release http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=63417
If they keep thier r&d up they may be able to come close to a truly cheap solution