THE AGE OF LOW COST (2)

The Age of Low Cost (2)
THE APPLICATIONS WAVE
Netbooks for text books - that's the switch technology training company NIIT has done in the last six months for all students in its premier GNIIT course. In the next six months it will migrate all its courseware onto netbooks and tablets. "Students won't carry books, but tablets to class," says Vijay Thadani, CEO, NIIT.
NIIT has also invested 200 man-years of work generating digital content for the curriculum for classes 4 to 12. Says Thadani: "The devices add richness to static content. For instance, Rani Ki Jhansi can come alive on tablets via video.
Graphs will be more dynamic. There's a tremendous opportunity to create a revolution with tablets." NIIT courseware is available in 14 languages. Educomp, another education services provider, also plans to migrate course content to tablets.
About 500 people are working on converting its content into digital formats. It already uses a combination of projectors and electronic white boards to deliver classes in 7,200 schools across the country.
"Now, we will give each student a tablet," says Shantanu Prakash, founder-CEO, Educomp Solutions. School students, even from poorer sections, could be big consumers of low-cost tablets.
The government is offering DataWind's Aakash, a 7-inch tablet, to students at a subsidised price of 1,750. "Specs of Aakash look ok for use by students," says Prakash.
Subho Ray, president, Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) says that the device will catalyse the market if it finds its way into 5-6 lakh schools. "There was a vision earlier, but low cost computers were never given away to target communities.
At least now the government is giving away the tablets to students to try out," he says. Its not just schools, but tablets could make a difference to India's farm lands too. S Sivakumar, chief executive, agri business, says crop management advice can be personalized to individual farmers, if they can video or photo shoot the field conditions and transmit to experts via tablets.
"Through use of video/photo transmission, price negotiation process can be instant and more effective. Order aggregation for farm inputs will help in streamlining logistics and reduce costs," he adds.
Mass adoption, says Tuli of Datawind, will happen when such devices help users generate business. "Today a phone is a commerce tool for all segments of users. Same will happen with computers. When mobile phones hit the market no one thought your neighbourhood small merchant or a rickshaw puller will buy them. Today they all do."
- Shelley Singh