HCL Launches Android ICS Tablet “My Edu” Starting At Rs 7,999

HCL Infosystems, has launched three new tablets in India, focusing on the education segment, with a starting price of Rs 7,999, reports The Mobile Indian. My Edu Tab U1, the first tablet from HCL, is targeted towards mass market and is the cheapest tablet from HCL starting at Rs 7,999. The other two tablets; My Edu Tab K12 and My Edu Tab HE are tablets specially designed for students.


The ‘My Edu Tab K12′ comes with pre-installed educational apps and NCERT books for free with a memory card for students up to 12th Std and retails for Rs  11,499. The ‘My Edu Tab HE’ comes with pre-installed apps and multimedia content for  professional and technical skills for college students and retails at Rs 9,999. Both the tablets also come with support for cloud storage.



Specifications

All the tablets: My Edu Tab U1, My Edu Tab K12, and My Edu Tab HE comes with similar hardware specifications. HCL’s tablets sports a 7-inch Capacitive screen with 800*480 pixel resolution, 1GHz Arm Cortex A8 processor processor and runs on the latest version of Google’s Android operating system Ice Cream Sandwich.  It also comes with 512MB RAM, 4GB of internal memory, 0.3 Megapixel front facing camera, USB support, a mini USB port and a micro SD card slot. It with 3600mAh battery to support the powerful 1GHz processor and Android OS which with normal usage might last up to 4-5 hours.

3G connectivity

Although the tablets do not come with support for 3G out of the box customers can enjoy 3G connectivity via USB modem. There are a tons of exciting packages from Vodafone, Reliance, Airtel, BSNL and MTNL.

Apps

None of the HCL’s latest tablet support Google Play (Previously Android Market) but comes with support for  HCL Me App Store from where users can download applications. HCL claims that HCL Me App Store features more than 10,000 apps. All three tablets come with pre-installed apps like BookMyShow, Clear Trip, Hungama, Money Control and more.

HCL entered the tablets market late last year with HCL Me X1 Tab which again didn’t come with support for Android Market. Although Android Market could be separately installed if customers could get hold of the installer file for the same which becomes too technical for an average Joe. The same is bound to happen with HCL’s newer tablets.

Competition

Currently, there are plenty of tablets in the market targeted towards Indian mass market from Reliance’s CDMA Tab (Our take), Beetel Magiq, Wishtel, iBerry, and governments own Aakash tablet. While other tablets in the market may not come with pre-installed educational packages the only way for HCL’s new offerings to succeed is if they directly market them to schools and colleges.

The only competition to HCL’s educational tablets comes from AcrossWorld’s educational tablet ATab which retails at just about Rs 5,000 and has tie ups with educational institutions  and universities like Carmel Public School, Gaujrala; Dr. Ambedkar Memorial Institute of Technology, Rourkela; Shikhar Shishu Sadan Convent School, Dhampur; and, Gandhinagar Public School, Moradabad with a dozen schools and colleges from cities like Delhi, Kanpur, Allahabad, Rourkela and Gaujarala indicating interest in the ATab.

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Micromax Launches Low-Cost Tablet Targeting Education Segment

Micromax has launched Funbook, a tablet which runs the latest iteration of Google’s Android operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich, and has priced it at Rs 6,499, reports BGR India. The tablet is targeted towards students and includes study material  for students from Std 1 to graduation level. Micromax has provided an E-Reading app which offers content from publishers like Pearson and Universal Tutors with content for over 500 courses including preparatory material for medical, Engineering and MBA exams. The company claims that the tablet has been manufactured in India.

Hardware Specifications and Features
The tablet comes with a 7-inch capacitive display and sports a 1.2ghz Cortex A8 processor with Dual Mali 2D/3D Graphics processor.. It runs on Google’s Android operating system-Ice Cream Sandwich which is the latest version of Android from Google. It also comes with 4GB built-in memory which is expandable up to 32GB via a MicroSD card and 512MB of RAM. It also features a 0.3 Megapixel front facing camera for video calls.

It comes with rather dismissable battery of 2800 mAh that can offer up to 5 hours of browsing time. Comparatively, Indian Government’s Aakash Tablet comes with 3,300 mAh Battery.

Connectivity

The tablet does not support 3G out of the box, that is, it does not include support for a SIM card but customers can avail 3G connectivity through a USB 3G dongle, which is being bundled with the device. The device also includes support for WiFi,USB 2.0, and HDMI out.

Apps & Entertainment

Apart from study material the tablet also comes with entertainment apps and multimedia content with a collection 6000 songs, 4000 videos and M clips that is powered by Bollwood Hungama and Big Flix app to watch movies. It also includes facility to watch live TV with the Zenga TV app. It also comes with support for HD playback (MPEG2/4, AVI, WMV, MOV).

Competition

While a lot of manufacturers are jumping into the lucrative tablet market, there’s little left for them to differentiate their product which is why almost everyone seems to target the India’s huge student market. Micromax’s competitors – HCL’s My Edu Tablets, Aakash Tablet by Indian Government, and Wishtel which target the same audience has tied up with various educational institutions. Information on any such tie ups by Micromax was not available.

Micromax has hit the sweet spot with its price tag of Rs 6,499. Now only if they market it well to educational institutions or ink strategic tie-ups with them, the tablet could probably do better than Aakash tablet which has hit numerous hurdles since inception.

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Students Tablet From HCL Launched India

Yesterday HCL info systems launched three new tablets in India. Today the world is flooded by tablets. In this last 1 year the table sales rate have increased enormously and almost all IT manufacturing companies are producing tablet of their own. So as for now hcl infosystems $2.4-billion IT hardware and services provider said that it had captured 15% of the Indian tablet market after launching its first tablet (Me Tab) last year. These HCl tablets are fully loaded and have features differently. So price and specs of all the three tablets are given below.


HCl U1 Tablet 

This is a wifi + 3G enabled tablet and is based on android icecream sandwich operating system. The display size of this tablet is 7 inch which is great for viewing movies & videos. So this miniature machinery comes with 17 inbuilt applications that includes  jobs, games, social networking and music. This tablet is priced at rupees 7999/-

HCL MyEdu Tab is another tablet that has two versions the k12 version is almost the same as the U1 and is priced at 11499 just because it has some more additional features. Another one comes bundled with K12 curriculum, educational applications, games, videos and ebooks. The tablet for higher education bundled with surprises and is priced at Rs 9,999. Both education-based tablets have NCERT-based content which is indeed a good thing to make the tablet run.

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