Telecom Lead India: Micromax has entered into the
tablet arena with the launch of its latest low-cost Android 4.0 ICS based
tablet FunBook for Rs 6,499. This offering will intensify the price
war in the fast-growing Indian tablet PC market. Recently, WishTel announced
its tablet for the education sector.
Recently, CyberMedia Research said about 475,000
units of media tablets were sold in India in CY 2011.
With the launch of new, competitively priced models from
vendors such as Intex and Micromax, CyberMedia Research expects bigger
marketing spends to popularize the media tablet form factor as well as signal
brand strength by leading players.
The competition is expected to intensify further with new
vendors launching their products during 2012. Currently, individuals as well as
enterprises are experimenting with the media tablet platform for
various use cases. In a short span of time, the market has already seen
verticalized product offerings and during 2012 this will become an
even stronger trend. For now, Education seems to be the vertical
with highest priority of adoption and a large number of models are
positioned at this segment,” said Naveen Mishra, lead telecoms analyst,
CyberMedia Research.
Micromax has partnered with Tata Teleservices, under which
the tablet will come bundled with Tata Photon plus, with additional 1GB
download offer for the first month.
At the launch of the tablet, Deepak Mehrotra, CEO at
Micromax told Telecom Lead: Only Tata Photon Plus driver is available on ICS
(Ice-cream Sandwich). In future, the company will be partnering with other
operators as well. It all depends on the availability of drivers on ICS.”
He added that the company has a capacity of producing over 1
lakh Funbook tablets per month and the numbers will go up according to the
uptake among consumers.
The company has established over 100 service centers across
major cities. Mehrotra said the company has established sales support
infrastructure across the country.
Micromax Funbook Tab sports a 1.2GHz Cortex A8 processor,
Dual Mali-400 2D/3D GPU, a 7-inch Capacitive Touch Screen which has a
resolution of 800×480 pixels and comes with multi-touch, Pinch to Zoom
features.
The tablet has 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal memory,
WiFi, a front facing 0.3 megapixel camera, HDMI port, a full USB port with
3G dongle support, a mini USB port, a micro SD card slot and 2800 mAh
Battery.
The company claims that the Funbook is the first tablet,
which is completely manufactured in India, apart from Chipset and Screen.
Micromax is also offering interactive course material for
CBSE ranging from class 1 till class 12th on a 4GB MicroSD card
for Rs 799.
The company has partnered with leading players in the
education sphere such as Pearson India, Vriti and Everon Education to offer
interactive course material. Deepak Mehrotra added that Micromax is all
planning to tie-up with several educational instituted and universities to
offer its Funbook.
The tablet is pre-loaded with Vriti e-learning app that
allows 500 smart courses ranging from class 1 till class 12th and
preparatory material for Medial, Engineering and MBA courses.
Alongside all these, Micromax Funbook user can get access to
the 1000 movies, 6000 songs and 400 Video clips and the latest games, apps. It
also comes with Document reader apps, text editor, Adobe Flash, PDF, Youtube
and more.
The company has also partnered with Zenga TV to offer LiveTV
on FunBook.
