http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10740817

I wonder how good it might be for a mere £23. Thoughts?

As far as we're concerned, it will be absolutely appalling performance wise. As far as India is concerned, well it's a massive step up from nothing.

It is cheap though.

So? If it still won't do what we want it to do then it is worthless. I don't care if it's cheap, if it doesn't run stuff properly it might as well not exist.

The issue for us would be it would have the performance of a PC from a decade ago, which to us is horribly underpowered. Most our phones these days have more power. However, its cheapness is ideal for a place like India, where computer penetration is tiny, it will help push India into the information age, which they can't afford to do with what we're used to. Once they have started this, it is likely their GDP will rise (technology and information is where the money is at these days, also, it will help greatly with learning, especially modern science) then they can move up to our computing standards.

If it does come to fruition it will be a good example of cheap tech and a massive help for those countries which cannot afford computing like us, but will be nowhere near the standards of Western computing.

The likelihood of it coming to fruition, especially at that price, however, is low.

could be useful for me tbh, throw pdfs on there, run all my table top chars via a cheap Indian tablet, do some web browsing on it too

Its cheapness is ideal for people like myself.

For doing what? Looking at an image? It will be good for a picture frame and thats it.

Typing stuff directly in to something to store and transfer later whilst 'on the move'.

Its not really "on the move" size.

Looking at the cost of phones, the price point they are after is doable with less than smartphone hardware. However, bear in mind that that is the cost to build, not the consumer price. Typical consumer markup is a few 100%.

Also, this is an initiative to get a technology void country on the path to modernisation, not to provide us with cheap tablets. They will probably be heavily subsidised to do this work and will not be interested in giving it to the rest of the world, as there wouldn't be the actual demand.

It's actually cheaper than a photo frame heh.

India has one of the highest uptake of mobile phones in the world, many of them just as good as ours. They also have as high a portion of the population that are willing to buy things like an Iphone. And if they could actually get this to work, I'm pretty sure they would have a fair few orders from around the world.

Source? Cos with a GDP of $3k per capita I really doubt that... Unless by uptake you mean rate of adoption (amount of people getting mobile phones for the first time), which I could believe, though only in the case of them getting older style phones, really. As for a large portion willing to buy iPhones etc, they really don't have the money for that.

As for orders from outside India, I doubt it, they wouldn't be sold at cost. Just look up the cost to make of a variety of devices and compare to the cost of purchase. I would estimate a selling price of £100 if sold here, and at that point you're no longer in super cheap territory (there are devices at that price point already).

Your talking very generally with GDP. When I say the amount of people willing to buy an iphone I mean the 1-2 million that can easily afford one and are in the know about it (as in the UK and US).

You seem to be thinking of India as one whole country with everyone living exactly the same way. You are simply mislead by the fact that, in this country and throughout Europe wealth is slightly more distributed among the population, in India it is extremely less so.

Also I do not mean orders coming in from western Europe or similar places. I think that if this was to get off the ground it is highly likely that this would become a sensation in places such as Africa, Latin America, China, Indonesia not to mention the surrounding countries of India and the middle east. I think a target market of up to 4 billion people is pretty hard to miss.

Edit: Oh and on the mobile phone front, I think it is very important to understand the lack of a good landline phone system in India, hence the huge numbers of mobile phones in use. Most are bought new, and for example look at the new phones in shops today then look at the cheaper ones. You'll see that there is a lack of older technology, this is because as it gets better it gets cheaper to only make that one technology as opposed to making the new one for one market and the old one for another. It's understandable that you would think they would use phones from our own past but this is not usually the case.

With the amount thing, you said portion (which I took as ratio), which would imply a hell of a lot considering India's 1.2B pop (vs our 70M). I know they have a fair few rich people, but the population in general is poor, and I'm talking about the poor end of the population anyway.

As for the orders from other 3rd world countries, that is actually quite a good point and might happen if successful (again, assumed Western as that is what this convo had been about up to now).

As for the phones, just done a quick Google and they do have a lot of the cheaper phones from here. I was also under the impression there is a large amount of recycling of the older reliable phones that the Western world have donated, to allow simple access for even the poorest of people. But still, think there may be a misunderstanding about whether we are talking about rate of adoption (which will be high) against overall penetration (which will be low relative to the UK, for now - just check Wiki, it's 50%, ours is over 100% [more phones than people]).

Is Scottie trolling?

Not in this thread.

Yeah I was gonna say... They aren't interested in the 1~2% of the population over there who can buy an expensive phone.... Or rather they shouldn't be. The other 95%ish of the market is in desperate need of a very cheap and Viable mobile phone, something along the lines of mine or an older style Nokia. They need to be robust and simple for the time being

nokia 3310 could save the world

1 - 2 % of 1 Billion people (India)

Nar no point selling it I suppose. But seriously there is easily the same amount of people in India who are interested in high end products as there are in the UK and US, the difference is here and in the US there are also plebs who can also buy the products where as in India the plebs (much higher percentage then in the UK or US) could never afford it.

That's only 10 million people In comparison a tiny amount compared the masses of people in poverty in India But yeah the rest of your point makes sense.

10 million well informed people who could and would need to use a device similar to an ipad/phone. Which is about the same as in the UK.

Just watched newsnight, one of the business heads who has an important role in the British delegation over there right now was talking about how British business and trade labels are really trying to get past trade barriers preventing them from reaching the 300million consumerist population, now granted that's on a lower scale compared to British consumerist population but it gives a pretty big proportion able to buy an smart phone worth doing something.

So I think this little £23 device will really be of use in an educational sense, as most people who need or want access to a computer or communication network pretty much have it.

Anywho I recommend people watch tonights newsnight, gives a better understanding of India in relation to the uk ect.

There is one problem...

This product looks like shit.

And that's why it's not for us