Rs 3,000-tablet PC sparks 500,000-order frenzy

A fortnight after Canadian electronics-maker Datawind unveiled its Ubislate, the world’s cheapest tablet PC priced at Rs 3,000, the company has bagged orders for around 500,000 units from dealers and distributors across the world.

A fortnight after Canadian electronics-maker Datawind unveiled its Ubislate, the world’s cheapest tablet PC priced at Rs 3,000, the company has bagged orders for around 500,000 units from dealers and distributors across the world.

HT Image

The company, which is manufacturing the device at Hyderabad, is in talks to set up at least two more manufacturing facilities in India to bump up its monthly manufacturing capacity to over a million units.

Ubislate is a 7-inch tablet PC with 256 MB RAM, 2GB flash storage capacity and a 366 MHz processor, running on Android 2.2 operating system.

“We are actively exploring options to set up new Ubislate manufacturing lines at Noida and Cochin,” Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO Datawind told HT. “Around $50 million (Rs 250 crore) will be invested over the next few months (for this).”

The company is in talks with five electronic manufacturing service (EMS) companies and will finalise two to produce Ubislates for Datawind. EMS companies manufacture electronic products on contract for technology companies. Taiwan-based Foxconn, for instance, manufactures products for technology giant Apple.