Many industry peers believe that the launch of Akash tablet, tablet India created, changed the face of the computer industry forever. Even though the low cost tablet India wanted to procure for its students was ridiculed by several experts in the beginning, it is considered a giant step towards making the devices more affordable for the masses. The falling education standards were a cause of worry in India and several expert committees gave their recommendations to the Human Resource Development ministry, government of India to salvage the situation. The experts were unanimous on one single recommendation that using computing and internet access in a blended learning environment could empower both the students and the teachers and could go a long way in enhancing the quality of education in the country that was once the seat of knowledge.
The government of India embarked on a very ambitious project of procuring low cost Akash tablet computers for equipping its students with the devices. The enormity of this project can be gauged by the fact that a whopping 220 million students across the length and breadth of the nation were to be equipped with these devices in a few years. The skeptics doubted the intentions behind the project and questioned if such a low cost device could incorporate even workable features. It looked as if the tablet India desperately needed would never materialize.
The Indian government, however, kept pursuing the matter tenaciously and tried to negotiate with several manufacturers till a UK company DataWind came forward and designed, developed and manufactured the first batch of 100,000 Akash tablets based on the technical specifications set by IIT Rajasthan, a premier technical institute. It's too early to judge the success of the experiment but the Akash tablet project at least gave a new education model to the developing and under-developed countries. The success of the affordable device gave a huge boost to the calling tablet price computer industry and the companies recognized the presence of a huge market that was still untapped.
The twenty-first century is often referred to as the internet age, a decent computer education is essential to get any consequential employment. The availability of low cost tablet computers can go a long way in making people computer literate and raising their standards of living. The low price tablet India experimented with has given a ray of hope to billions around the world with limited resources, hope that they can live their dreams, realize their ambitions.