Availability of Tablet in India | Different Types of Tablet used in India

India is warming up to tablets. The sales are at 8000 units per month, but that will only pick up when two things happen – hardware prices fall and so does the data plans. Hardware prices have a wide range right now. The cheapest can go for Rs. 8000 (check out on Ebay, you may get it even lower) and the most expensive one can run up to Rs. 40,000. The data plans, lets just say, one hasn’t settled yet – subscribers and providers alike.

So what does this nascent market look like? It is not the most vibrant of the markets like in America, Europe or China. It is picking up slowly. Indian consumers had a chance to buy from a choice of 10 tablets launched at various stages. Two new tablets which have received rave reviews across – iPad 2 and Motorola Xoom – are rumored to hit Indian shores. The new tablets not withstanding, India has seen some decent tablets. It all started with Olivepad and reached the crescendo with the launch of iPad. In between, there were quite a few tablets. Let’s take a look at them all.

Olivepad

Olivepad is the pioneer. It could probably be the first tablet to be launched in India. Priced at Rs. 25,000, Olivepad packs in a lot of hardware. OlivePad is ideally suited for mobile internet and browsing with 3.5G HSUPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It comes with a 3 megapixel in-built camera and a front camera. Olivepad comes with a 7-inch capacitive touch screen.



Binatone HomeSurf

Dubbed as poor man’s iPad, Home Surf has 128 mb RAM, ARM11 667 MHz processor and 2GB internal storage and an 8-inch resistive screen. Built-in Stereo Speakers and microphone, Li-Ion Rechargeable battery which can support up to 4 Hrs video playback on full charge and one miniUSB port. Cost : Rs. 8995. More



Infibeam Phi

Phi runs ARM9’s 600 MHz processor with 8GB storage and 256 MB RAM. Though, it has a 7-inch resistive touch screen. Phi has Wi-Fi but doesn’t have Bluetooth or microphones on-board. Infibeam Phi costs Rs. 14999.



Accor @Pad

7-inch TFT Full touch display, Built-in Wi-Fi 2GB flash memory. Expandable to 32 GB through MicroSD card, battery backup : 4 to 5 hours, USB ports available – Can connect external mouse, keyboard or hard drive and Ethernet. @Pad comes with 128 MB RAM and is powered by 400 MHz VIA VM8505. Price : Rs. 9999.



Wespro ePad

At Rs. 7999, this is still the cheapest tablet launched in India. Wespro pad has 7-inch resistive touch screen, VIA WM8505 400MHz, 2GB NAND flash memory, WiFi, 128 MB RAM and Ethernet connectivity. But you can imagine at 400 MHz there is not much you can do with it !



Samsung Galaxy Tab

Launched at a price of Rs. 37,000, Galaxy Tab has settled at a price of Rs. 24,900. Though Olivepad was launched much earlier, Galaxy Tab was the one which created flutter. Probably the ad spend of Samsung and the ‘star power’ of Karan Johar helped Galaxy Tab reach that status. Galaxy Tab’s specs include : 7” TFT-LCD, front-facing and rear-facing cameras, 1GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, 3G, Bluetooth, WiFi and in-built speakers. Read our Samsung Galaxy Tab Vs Olivepad comparison article.



Notion Ink Adam

A 178 degree rotating swivel camera, a touchpad at the back, pixelQI screen to facilitate sunlight reading and a radio to go with it. All these are features of Notion Ink Adam. Though Notion Ink isn’t retailing at any stores, there is a strong family sentiment in selling the tablets. The tablets are sold to people who comment on Notion Ink blog. A nice way to get around the supply problem.



Apple iPad

Two weeks after iPad was launched, the price was dropped by 3K. The cheapest iPad is available for Rs. 24500. iPad has a 9.7 inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixel and a lot of apps which Android tablets can only dream of. Everyone just love to have one of these. Enough has been said about this tablet.



Motorola Xoom, the first decent Android tablet and iPad 2 are rumored to be hitting Indian ports sometime soon. Until that happens, these are the noteworthy tablets India has seen and bought.

Lists of Broadband Subscribers in India

Although, the growth in Mobile telephony has been stupendous in India over past 5-6 years, same cannot be said about broadband. The growth in broadband subscribers has been at snail’s pace. Mobile telephony spread across length and breadth of India, thanks to cheap handsets and even cheaper call rates. Unfortunately, broadband could not reach the masses due to higher prices, lower speeds, infrastructural issues among other reasons. Even today, India’s broadband density is miniscule 1 percent with majority of subscribers in Urban cities only!

Bringing Internet connectivity to masses, especially in rural areas, is one of the key goals and Indian Government envisages to cover 2,50,000 village panchayats with broadband by 2012. Currently, only about 97,548 villages are covered with broadband.

In a recent press release, Government has released State-wise broadband subscribers including urban and rural areas Circle-wise connections.

Sl. No	State/Telecom Circle	Broadband subscribers (As on 30.11.2010)
1	Andaman & Nicobar	5045
2	Andhra Pradesh	992222
3	Assam	67098
4	Bihar (including Jharkhand)	146148
5	Delhi*	972552
6	Gujarat	656041
7	Haryana	235201
8	Himachal Pradesh	57422
9	Jammu & Kashmir	46650
10	Karnataka	1129392
11	Kerala	699429
12	Maharashtra (including Mumbai, Goa)	1847013
13	Madhya Pradesh (including Chhattisgarh)	418091
14	North East**	37605
15	Orissa	172405
16	Punjab	523508
17	Rajasthan	333165
18	Tamil Nadu (including Chennai)	1331956
19	Uttar Pradesh (including Uttarakhand)	568936
20	West Bengal (including Kolkata)	497971
	TOTAL	10737850

Highlights

• Maharashtra leads broadband subscriber list with over 18 Lakhs subscribers followed by Tamil Nadu (13.3 L) and Karnataka (11.3 L)
• Andaman & Nicobar Islands have least subscriber base with only 5k subscribers
• Entire North-East region has about 37 k subscribers
• Kerala, even though being one of the smallest states has about 7 lakh subscribers and has maximum broadband density among states

India ranked as the 7th Most Hard Working Nation of the World

India is furiously pursuing development through science and technology. But, none of these automated efforts would work without the hard-work that its citizens put in every core sector of the industries they work in.

The sincerity and hard-work put in by Indians has enhanced the nation’s visibility on the global map as being the 11th largest world economy, and is already wealthier than Australia and Spain. Moreover, this nation of hard-working geeks produces over 6 lakh engineering graduates annually.

While the West may think of India as still being a developing economy, a latest survey by Ipsos Global and Reuters has ranked India as 7th most hard-working nation of the world, in terms of its full-time workers using their allotted paid holidays.


The survey provides that more than half the number of Indian employees do not use their vacation holidays which usually count up to 28-30 days of govt holidays plus paid holidays annually, apart from regular weekend leaves.

Usually, China is looked up to as the Michael Jordan of emerging economies. And, every rising nation wants to emulate China, in terms of its professionalism and sheer growth it has logged over the past decade, as a role model to move higher up the ladder.

In fact, even Indians are considered less professional than their Chinese counterparts when it comes to businesses other than outsourcing and selected few fields. But, in this case, Indians employees have scored over their Chinese counterparts when it comes to using up their paid quota of holidays.

As against 65% of the Chinese employees taking up all their vacation days, only 58.5% of Indian workers avail of such optional holidays. This also counts pretty well when compared with American workers, 57% of whom take all their vacation days.

Moreover, India stands better-off against other global nations such as France, Mexico, Russia, Italy, Poland and Sweden when it comes to the likelihood of workers from respective countries claiming holidays from their quota of paid holidays provided by their employers.

While France emerges as the biggest laggard with 89% of worker citizens availing of their allotted vacation days, Japanese stood afloat at numero uno position with only 1/3rd of working population claiming their full quota of 16 public holidays in Japan.