I am glad to inform you that the Indian Government has decided to go ahead with Aakash IV, please see the tender notice by DGS&D (sorry about the long link - could not locate a shorter one):
The specs of Aakash IV are an improved version of what we had for Aakash II. The new specifications have been arrived at after fixing the shortcomings of the previous version and keeping in mind the current technology offerings.
According to unofficial sources, quite a few vendors seem to have expressed an interest in participating in this inquiry. We expect to have many vendors and many models through this offering. The overall size of the order is also expected to be much larger than before.
This should allow interested buyers to choose a model of their choice and order the required numbers. Although the cost may be more than what is possible in a centralised system of procurement, it is easier to manage. This system also has the potential to let only the vendors with good offerings to flourish. Adherence to the specifications by the hardware vendors will hopefully allow the applications that are being
developed by the Aakash enthusiasts all over to be able to run on all devices, irrespective of the vendor and the model type.
This ends once and for all the controversies surrounding the Aakash project in favour of the team that developed it. We have summarised some of the Aakash development work taking place at IIT Bombay in a brochure with two pages, the links for which are given below:
A half of the applications shown in this brochure run in the Android OS, while the rest run on Ubuntu 12.0. I am now personally interested in exploring the netbook version of Aakash, a model with a fixed keyboard, and the GNU/Linux OS.
Regards,
Kannan Moudgalya
Prof IIT Bombay
