Thursday, October 6, 2011

Capitalism for Commonweal

Sounds like a contradiction to we in A-Merry-Ca, but capitalism for the public good can allocate resources to benefit the public good.

Of course, we can't do that in the red white and blue USA even though they can do it in India.

Makes me proud. (Does anyone know of an emoticon to indicate sarcasm?)

USA! USA! USA!

[IDG News Service - India is closer to its much-touted target of a $35 tablet, with DataWind, a wireless Web access products maker in Montreal, designing and making a device that it will sell to the government for $50.

The country's Minister of Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal, launched the tablet, called Aakash, on Wednesday. The tablet will likely be distributed at a subsidy to students in higher education in the country.

DataWind has been able to get to a price of $38 for the tablet which has a 7-inch display with 800-by-480 pixel resolution, 256MB of RAM, 2GB flash storage, and a 366MHz processor from Connexant. The tablet runs the Android 2.2 operating system.

Local sales taxes, performance guarantees, and an exacting replacement warranty have taken the price to the government up to $50, said Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of DataWind in an interview.

The target is to get to $35 per unit, inclusive of warranty, once volumes pick up.

The Indian government is expected to buy 8 million to 10 million devices by March 31, 2012, the end of the Indian fiscal year, Tuli said. The first order of 100,000 units will be executed from a factory in Hyderabad over the next six weeks, he added.

Tuli said that Sibal's vision and the commitment of business from the government had driven the company to accept the challenge to come up with a device at about $35.]
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220554/India_s_low_cost_tablet_is_made_by_Canada_s_DataWind?source=CTWNLE_nlt_mobilew_2011-10-06

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