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HT Says Aakash II Sourced From China; Datawind Rubbishes Claims; We Ask, Does It Matter?
India’s ambitious e-education hardware project, the Aakash Tablet seems to have gotten itself in yet another controversy. A report from Indian daily Hindustan Times (HT) claims that instead of the tablet being made indigenously, its manufacturer Datawind merely purchased it wholesale from Chinese vendors & rebranded the same for Indian consumption.
The HT report comes as a heavy blow for the tablet which is trying to make a name for it, as the cheapest tablet in the world developed entirely in India. So far the tablet has borne the brunt of multiple failures. What was touted as a revolutionary product was criticized for its sub-standard build quality, poor battery & nearly inoperable resistive screen. Though the price cannot be matched by any tablet manufacturer so far, the hardware fell way short by any standard of quality.
A second iteration with better internals & a contemporary capacitive multi-touch screen nicknamed Aakash II was announced. As a safeguard, instead of IIT-Rajasthan with whom Datawind clashed was bypassed & instead, II-Bombay was chosen to check the hardware & come up with software too.
Though IIT-B has certified Aakash fit for use, this new controversy is nonetheless a severe knock on the capabilities of its, now alleged, manufacturer. Interestingly, though Suneet Tuli, CEO Datawind called the report “sensationalist”, “inaccurate” and “misleading”, he did accept that ‘Parts’ of the tablet were indeed ‘sourced’ from China. Components like motherboards & ‘kits’ were outsourced for the first lot of 10,000 units. But, he still claimed that the tablet was assembled & programmed in India.
Does it matter? Globally, almost every multinational company involved in consumer durables gets its products manufactured in China. Leading tech companies like Apple, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, etc have huge contracts there. Furthermore, thanks to quality control standards set in the beginning, the products leaving the factory perform without a glitch. In fact, every small parameter has a tolerance level attached to it & only those units that are acceptable get the coveted OK label from Quality Control (QC) dept.
Under such strict circumstances, should we fret over where the tablet was ‘kitted’? For a project which took a whole year to iron out anomalies, students should be grateful to get the device before they pass out! What do you think?
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2012-11-26 05:11:38
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