There has been a lot of chatter in the past day over the Indian government’s announcement of a $35 tablet device that is aimed at the student community in India. Many industry observers have been skeptical about the price and claim that the device is either going to be heavily subsidized by the government to breach the $35 price mark or this is a vaporware.
While both the options have a high probability of becoming true, there is a third possibility of this actually being true. And according to Nicolas from ARMDevices, that possibility comes from AllGo Embedded Systems – an R&D company that is based out of Bangalore, India. The company was at Orlando last month to showcase the low cost tablet PC at the FreeScale Technology Forum and according to Nicolas, this could be the very same PC that Indian HRD minister, Kapil Sibal was talking about.
If that is indeed the case, we do have the bill of materials for the device. Here is a tentative sum
ARM9 Processor: $5 (Freescale i.MX233)
Memory: $3
WiFi B/G: $4
Other discret components: $3
Battery: $5
7? 800×480 resistive touch screen: $15
Total bill of material: $35
AllGo is a private entity and is definitely going to add a margin to the costs. Even if there is no marketing cost, there is going to be additional costs incurred from manufacturing and distribution. It is likely that the government may subsidize these additional costs and considering that the prices of components may go down at a higher production rate, the device may actually end up at a price of $35 – inclusive of AllGo’s margins.
But you may note that the $35 price point is when the bulk production gets going. I have simply no clue about how the device could eventually end up at a $10 price point.
Nevertheless, if you are curious about this device, you should check out Nicolas’ video of the AllGo tablet below. Looks very very impressive for $35!