India unveils prototype of $35 tablet computer

[nando]

i'd buy it just because it's cheap and i'm a total mac head.

 

[BakuFunn]

Link
Seems right.

No it doesn't. I could build a DS Lite from replacement parts for $90, I doubt Nintendo is paying that much per unit. It sounds more like wild guessing than a serious analysis.

And why use a DS as an example? It was overpriced from the beginning. Why not use other tablets for comparison? This one is $100. And that's the retail price. Probably costs $60 to manufacture.

Electronics are dirt cheap nowadays, you can get a decent powered CPU for a few bucks, design an embedded solution around it for a few more bucks, and you get bulk discounts you wouldn't believe if you order several million units at once. The greatest cost is the screen, and screens are getting cheaper as well. Develop a custom OS for it and you'll get more out of the hardware than you would with some existing, all-purpose OS (*cough*Android*cough). You could easily get a tablet well capable (as opposed to "sort of capable, given enough time") of text processing, basic web, YouTube and video conferencing, for $35.

Remember, this tablet doesn't have to be the "Jack of all trades, master of none" like commercial tablets. It doesn't have to have powerful hardware. Everything it needs to do can be done with dirt-cheap low-power dedicated coprocessors. The downside: it won't be able to do anything other than what it was designed for, for example, games. The upside: it will do the things it's supposed to do pretty well, and it will only cost $35.

I beg to differ on the fact that it'll do things well.
With that low resolution screen, viewing web pages will become irritating as you have to continuously scroll everywhere. The interfaces we have today such as the multitouch-web browsing experience on the iPad work mediocre at best. How much better do you think this tablet can do it with worse hardware? I'm not saying it's a bad thing for this to exist, I'm only saying this won't be that god-send cheap awesome bang-for-buck competition inducing device that you all seem to think it is.

 

[Veho]

You're still comparing apples and oranges here. You're comparing the manufacturing cost of one device with the retail price of another device.

I beg to differ on the fact that it'll do things well.
With that low resolution screen, viewing web pages will become irritating as you have to continuously scroll everywhere. The interfaces we have today such as the multitouch-web browsing experience on the iPad work mediocre at best.
I see. You should have said so from the start. If a $500 tablet (that actually costs $250 to manufacture) is "mediocre at best", no wonder you expect a cheaper one to be crap. But fact is, cheaper tablets are good enough for a whole lot of people, and all I'm saying is it's possible that you can design and construct a $35 tablet on par with the ones currently selling for $200 or more. Now, if you consider those to be crap, then sure, this one will be crap too.

QUOTE(BakuFunn @ Jul 27 2010, 02:20 AM) I'm not saying it's a bad thing for this to exist, I'm only saying this won't be that god-send cheap awesome bang-for-buck competition inducing device that you all seem to think it is.

Nobody said it would be. The $35 are the manufacturing costs, in India, and if it ever reaches the US (and it probably won't), through several (dozen) layers of intermediaries and middlemen and resellers, the price will balloon up to over $100 or more. Why? Because profit, and return on investment, and research and development, and shipping and handling. But it should still encourage competition and bring about cheap awesome bang-per-buck products, once buyers and developers see it's possible to make a serviceable tablet for $35 and sell it for $50.

Of course, with the prices dropping the way they are at the moment, it's entirely possible a $50 tablet pops up even before the Indian one is ever released.