NEW DELHI: DataWind, which claims to be the cheapest tablet in the world, has a total market share of 15.3 per cent and it is the number one tablet maker in India.
DataWind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli, who has so far been selling the tablets through certain universities and the Communications and Information Technology Ministry, now plans to go online to sell the tablet.
At present, DataWind tablets are primarily currently sold through its call-centre. Its website UbiSlate.com and other ecommerce partners intend to start establishing a retail presence this summer.
According to Cyber Media Research‘s India Quarterly Tablet Market report for Q1 2013, DataWind with a share of 15.3 percent in Indian tablet market is well ahead of Micromax (12.3 percent) and Apple (11.7 percent) in the first quarter of 2013.
Interestingly, DataWind‘s supply of 100,000 Aakash2 devices to IIT-Bombay are not included in CMR‘s Tablet Market Report. CMR considers the volume of commercially sold product for the calculation.
"The enormous demand for our products helps validate ourfocus on affordability and connectivity. Unlike many in this industry that are focused on providing media tablets to the elite, our focus is to
enable Indians with their first computer at an affordable price," said Tuli.
The company‘s UbiSlate 7C+ is the lowest priced tablet in the world at Rs 4,999 inclusive of all duties and taxes in the Indian market.
Exactly a year earlier, UbiSlate introduced multi-lingual tablet in English, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Punjabi and various other languages of India and the world.
Datawind entered a strategic alliance with Reverie Language Technologies Pvt. Ltd. of Bangalore to ensure that the Ubislate series of tablets will offer an end user experience in all major local languages of India and the world.
In April last year, Aakash One and Aakash Two tablets - technically named by its manufacturer DataWind as Ubislate 7+ and Ubislate 7C Models - were launched formally launched despite the controversy that surrounded the brand with Indian Institute of Technology - Rajasthan rejecting the models and the government shifting the work to IIT- Mumbai.
The tablet provides smartphone communication, internet access, tablet computing and multimedia entertainment, the devices also pack a powerful combination of content and applications.
