Govt plans to indigenise production of Aakash

The government plans to get the Cabinet's approval for manufacturing 50 lakh units of Aakash tablets in India, in a move to further lower the cost of the computing device, Telecom and IT Minister Kapil Sibal said.

Aakash 2, an upgraded model of its earlier version which was unveiled in July 2010, features 512 MB RAM, a 1 GHz processor and Android 4.0 operating system.

A large number of educational apps have been developed and ported on Aakash 2, including the ability to program (in various languages), read text books on an e-book reader, and 'Spoken Tutorials'.

Kapil Sibal said that the price of Aakash 2 tablet will be brought down to $35 (about Rs 1,900) by using more indigenous resources. Aakash 2 is currently priced at $49. The minister added that the version of the Aakash will also feature Skype.