Monday, November 15, 2010

rural india-new target for gadget makers

While tablets are certainly the hot technology right now, it seems rural Indian kids are the hottest target demographic right now. It started with the Rs. 1,600 computing device aimed at college students. Now it's an iSlate, a solar powered tablet for younger school kids. 

 

The iSlate being designed for rural Indian kids

The iSlate is being developed at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in collaboration with Rice University in the United States. It is designed to be an electronic notepad, especially useful in areas where schools don't have electricity. The chips that allow the tablet to be solar powered are in development by two associations. One is the Institute of Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (ISAID) at NTU and Switzerland's Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology. The chips will be similar to those in solar powered calculators.

There's no word on how much this will cost yet or what the specs will be. And like the Rs. 1,600 computing device, questions of availability, repair and practicality arise

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