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January 17th, 2012 
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The government has said it will require an additional 22 crore units of the world’s cheapest tablet Aakash to move a step further in its endeavour to merge education with information technology.
“Initially, we bought one lakh Aakash tablets but we need 22 crore more tablets in the coming years as per the Ministry of Human Resource,” Additional Secretary, HRD Ministry, N K Sinha said.
“To manufacture Aakash in such large numbers, fresh tenders will be released again and other companies along with Datawind (the London-based company that develops it) will also get a chance,” Sinha told media.
Preparations for the tender process is on, he said. On complaints from some quarters regarding the technical aspects of the device, including poor battery, slow processor speed and the overall build, Sinha said the issues are being looked into.
The official said the ministry has even received requests for Aakash from America, Panama, Ecuador and other African countries.
The device, a 7-inch touch screen tablet, has an ARM 11 processor and 256 MB RAM running under the Android 2.2 operating system. It has two universal serial bus (USB) ports and is capable of running high definition (HD) quality videos.
A substantially upgraded second-generation model called UbiSlate 7+ is slated for a January-end release.
Aakash, bought under the HRD Ministry’s National Mission on Eduction through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT) project, is available to students for Rs 1,100 after government subsidy.
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