The $35 indian tablet isn't vaporware | Hacker News Reader

The $35 indian tablet isn't vaporware

techradar.com

34 pointsblntechie13 comments

If it doesn't exist yet, it's vaporware until it does. Any time a device claims things that it hasn't yet actually produced, that's vaporware.

I disagree. There are discussions of Ubuntu 11.04 on mailing lists, but absolutely nothing has been produced yet.

Are you suggesting that Ubuntu 11.04 is vaporware until development starts? WTF?

Edit: Vaporware is a product that we were told was going to come out, but didn't. Vaporware isn't used to describe products that aren't even supposed to be released yet!

Vaporware is based on track record. I guess the Ubuntu team has a history of delivering what they promised.

So, this article is a government minister telling you that it isn't vaporware? And ending with the words "Never be sceptical of the government."?

Yeah...

Of the $35, which equates to INR 1500, INR 750 is government subsidy.

So it's really a $70 tablet. That's a lot more plausible given that you can already buy Chinese-built Android tablets for less than $100.

My calculation ($35 + half that) comes to a figure of about $50.

Your calculation is correct. If the tablet makes it to the retail market, it will cost around $50.

You are reading it wrong. It means that the end customer (student) will get it at 50% subsidy, which will be 17.5$

You're right. My bad.

Someone was telling me that typically hardware markup is 3x-4x from the bill of material to the retail price, but in India it's more like 5x-6x because of customs and duty overheads. Anyone care to comment?

That doesn't seem right. Apple is a high margin manufacturer and you often hear of a 50% markup on the BoM for their products http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/infrastructure/18592/app...

The markup on commodity computers (and I'd put Android tablets in that category) is very low.

It is ironic that the Indian Tablet would run an OS that does not support it's languages (Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Gurumukhi, Bengali, the list goes on). Perhaps they should take on Microsoft's offer of running CE on it for free.

Hands-on video of the tablet: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1600740

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