India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal has announced that the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science has developed a tablet with a retail price of $35 (approximately 1600 rupees), beating the price of MIT's One Laptop Per Child Program.
The Linux-based prototype performs Internet browsing, word processing, and video conferencing and offers wifi, 2 GB memory, and USB ports. It can even be converted to run on solar power (at an extra cost). The tablet has no hard disk, but instead uses a memory card, much like a mobile phone.
India hopes to find a manufacturer for the device in order to have it on the market by next year and to even drop the price to under $20 per unit. The development is part of their current education technology initiative, which has been working to bring Internet connectivity to India's colleges and universities.
[youtube]Ok4z9Xpapzc[/youtube]