The over hyped and yet under-performing Aakash tablet might end its journey very soon, even before it got a big leap with the sales. The government is deciding to bring an end to be what called as a sad end. After promising a count of 1 lac tablet devices to the HRD ministry, but in the test pilot run, they could deliver only 30,000 pieces and the fact which could be poking the ministry from the back is the criticism that the Aakash tablets have received from the students and users who got the device in their hands, and were unhappy with it. There were few complaints received from the users who got this tablet but ended up the device not booting up (faulty one).
Three Factors
The main three factors why Aakash will be discontinued are –
- Government might be rejecting LC extension which is closing by this month end.
- After initial delivery of Aakash to consumers, users came up with bad reviews of it and so Government asked Datawind to upgrade tablet to make it a bit feature rich, Datawind refused the offer to do that.
- Reliance 4G tablets coming soon by year end.
The Story
Datawind, the company from Montreal got the Letter of Credit for the Aakash tablet with the count of 1 million units. The initial round in the pilot run saw the delivery of 30000 tablets by Datawind, and the next 70000 units are pending. After the criticism the devices have received, government has asked Datawind to sell the upgraded version of the Aakash for the cost of Rs. 2250.
The upgraded version was going to sell at a price of Rs. 3000 through Datawind, and would be having the specifications like 766 MHz and a better battery life (compared to the present tablet having 366 MHz and a lesser battery life). Datawind refuses to sell the upgraded version of the tablet devices for the same price tag of Rs. 2250, and they have already got 20 lakh bookings for the upgraded version, as said by one of the Datawind promoters, Suneet S. Tuli.
The reason for Datawind refusing to sell the upgraded version of the tablet is the insufficiency of funds, and the company even claims that the HRD ministry has not paid them for the 30000 units that were supplied during the pilot run. Datawind still hopes and claims that the Letter of Credit would be extended well up to January 30th or later.
On the other hand, the HRD ministry is looking for new vendors to sell the next set of Aakash tablets which were to make the count to a total of 1 lakh units.
17 Reason Why Aakash Tablet is Failure
Strong contender to come – With Reliance
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited is planning to launch a 4G LTE based tablet devices along with the 4G service later this year, and this could take Aakash tablet and Datawind to nowhere. Though Datawind is expected to end the deal with the ministry, rumors that fly around say that Reliance might be tagging up with Datawind for the manufacturing of those 4G tablets, and if this happens, it could be a big blow for the government which gets the competition on one hand, and criticism on the other.
If Datawind loses the support from the government on its mid-way, they could be regaining it by getting a hand from Reliance but the government would have to stand with an answer for the sale of the remaining 70000 tablet devices which they have in the checklist already during the pilot run.
The entire story could open up after the month of January when its decided whether Datawind is going to get the LC from the HRD ministry, or is it any other company asking for the same.
We earlier shared a few (we shouldn’t say ’17’ as few though) reasons why the Aakash tablet would be a fail, and now the words could be proving right, although we too received a lot of criticism for instead criticizing the Aakash tablet, or Datawind, or the government for this big hype.
