I love electronics stores. I’m the kind of guy who you’ll find sauntering around Future Shop, staring at all the items I’d already seen when I was in last week. I re-visit so many times, but why don’t I buy anything? It’s because the sight of the bright yellow price tags rips little chunks from my soul.
It’s no secret that Canada has some of the highest rates for electronics in the world. It’s also no secret that our country’s digital divide is steadily increasing. As the poor become poorer, it is becoming more difficult for those less fortunate to purchase gadgets and gain access to the Internet, something that Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli called “a fundamental human right.”
I’m happy to report that this Montreal-based web access development company has recently developed a range of cheap digital tablets with the aim to help bridge the digital divide. Their cheapest product to date, a wireless tablet called the Ubislate 7Ci, ranks as the world’s lowest cost tablet, priced online at $37.99.
“This idea is to bridge the digital divide,” Tuli told the Globe and Mail, “to overcome the affordability barrier.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking: how can a tablet this low in price be of any quality sufficient enough to satisfy customers? The answer is it doesn’t. That is, it doesn’t when you compare it to top-of-the-line Apple products. The Ubislate 7Ci can only hold four gigabytes of memory, and has a screen resolution of 800-by-480 pixels, compared to the iPad mini’s 16 gigabytes of memory and 1024-by-768 display.
To those of us who currently own iPads or high-end Android tablets, the idea of owning a device that can only carry as much data as a DVD seems abysmal. But to those who wouldn’t be able to afford anything else, the opportunity is phenomenal.
Tuli told the Globe that his team is “working on its strategy to sell cut-rate ‘good enough’ tablets.” He knows that his tablets cannot be compared with high-end products, and his aims are not to make them so. He believes there is a strong market of consumers willing to trade performance for low-price.
And Tuli must be right; while the tablet can only provide Internet through wireless connections and has a screen resolution about as good as a screen on the back seat of an airplane, he says that the company initially struggled to keep up with the high volume of orders for it.
Evidently, there is high demand for such a product, and I personally feel it’s about time a company honed in on helping certain individuals acheive their human rights. What’s even better? Datawind recently announced that it plans to create a new tablet that will cost just $20, in pursuit of “mak[ing] tablet ownership possible for anyone and everyone.”
The Internet is meant for all of us, no matter what our financial circumstances are. It is the single, largest informative database which allows people to access and share information, a major contributor in upholding a functional democracy.
Yes, in their reviews, critics have frowned upon Datawind’s products. But these critics are wealthy snobs (comparatively speaking) who have trouble realizing that this technology is not intended for people like them. If Ubislate users have reasonable expectations, then they should be more than happy with a cheap device that gets the job done, affording Internet access to those who thought it inaccessible.
