AN INDIAN SAGA IN TABLET ARENA

DATAWIND BECOMES INDIA’S LEADING TABLET MAKER FOR Q1
2013

Summary:
The manufacturer has
become the market leader with a 15 percent local market share,ahead of Micromax and Apple.
That's even without factoring in the numbers from its
government-backed Aakash budget tablets.

Despite all the setbacks and media frenzy surrounding the Aakash series tablets, it turns out
that Datawind is in fact India's leading tablet maker. According to The Times of India, Datawind was the leader within the Indian market for the first quarter of
2013, supplemented with data by market research firm CyberMedia Research.
Between the January and March 2013 time period, Datawind had
a strong 15 percent of the Indian market, and this does not include the Aakash series of tablets. It
even beat out homegrown rival
Micromax, which tied Apple with close to a 12 percent market
each.

Furthermore, nearly 10,000 tablets were shipped daily, from
different vendors, for the January and March 2013 time period,
resulting in an increase of 150 percent growth compared to the
same time period last year. This translated to about 905,000
tablets sold for the period compared to 1,097,902 in the
prevoius quarter.
As far as Datawind is concerned,they appear to be in the good books of the Indian government
once again, as plans are being finalized for the fourth iteration
in the Aakash series, known as the Aakash 4.

Hiccups in Aakash Project :
Earlier this year, Datawind was having supply and delivery
commitment issues
with the Indian government, and
the entire project almost got scrapped. That was then, and
this is now. The project's goal to have an Aakash tablet within reach of every student in India is
now a step closer.
The time it took from drafting the specifications and delivering the final product to students has taken much longer than what
was originally expected. Now, the
100,000 Aakash 2 tablets--retailing for about US$20--have
been delivered to students across India by Datawind for the
government as promised. The
Aakash 3 tablet is slated to be released sometime this year.
Earlier reports has indicated it would be in June or July, but as
of yet, nothing is confirmed by neither the government nor
Datawind itself.
It's time for Indian students to fully embrace technology within the classroom and use the Aakash tablets given to them as learning aids and tools, and perhaps in the process, some
students will even venture further and create apps for the
Aakash series of tablets itself.
What many people don't realize is that Datawind does in fact
support an app development program for students. That is,
they are interested in students designing and developing apps
for the Aakash tablets, which would then be sold on Datawind's online app store.
Furthermore, Datawind also has
a similar revenue sharing platform that Apple has with
developers, and they are aggressively looking for more
developers to create apps.