By Rohit Gupta:
Steve Jobs once remarked that there is a market for screen sizes of 4.5 inches and then straight-away 10 inches; around which the tablet market should be hovering. There is no place for anything in between in general, and the 7-inch tablets are ‘dead on arrival’. But, the current trend seems to defy that logic. Or rather, the current market trend seems to blur the divide between cellular phones and tablet PC’s. Have a Samsung Galaxy Note on one side and a 7-inch tablet PC on the other, and the screen size will hardly seem to be the distinguishing factor between a Tablet and a cellular phone anymore.
The Indian market is warming up to the concept of Tablets, and the iPad is not the single option anymore for a tablet enthusiast. For folks who are price-conscious; the market is getting even more lucrative. The latest offering comes from the Indian Telecommunications player Micromax, which has recently announced the launch of ‘Funbook’; powered by Android 4.0 (Ice cream Sandwich).
It comes bundled with a Tata Photon EVDO datacard and supports 3G via USB Dongle. The specifications are worth having a note:
- Android 4.0
- 7-inch display with 800x480p resolution
- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
- 512MB RAM
- Mini-HDMI
- 2800 mAh battery
- 1.2GHz Cortex-A8 single core processor
Reports from NDTV suggest that the tablet will come preloaded with e-learning apps from a host of educational content providers. And, it comes to the market with a price-tag of Rs.6499.
After the hoopla surrounding Aakash and the following imbroglio between the governmental authorities and its manufacturer Datawind; this space is bound to be tapped by competitors. And going with the closing gap in prices and the logjam in providing Aakash tablet, the day is not far when independent competitors have a similar product in the offing. This space is probably going to be hotly contested in the near future.