At the launch of Samsung's Tab Iris, the Korean company which is pushing for its 'Make for India' campaign indeed had plenty to boast about. The tech giant even roped in RS Sharma, Chairman, TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) to talk about the advantages of biometric data and Aadhaar.
Sharma spoke about how the company's Rs 13,000 tablet is an attempt at solving Digital India's biggest problem, getting unique citizen data. According to the him, Iris recognition technology is 99.99 percent accurate which solves the problem of the 10 lakh duplicate citizen data. So with just with Iris scanning technology, Aadhaar can save about Rs 50,000 crores by reducing the money spent on catering to duplicates identities.
While that sounds like big mess that Samsung is about to solve by selling its Galaxy Tab Iris to businesses and e-governance services, we all do understand that Samsung will make a killing (in terms of revenues) with this as well. Samsung is selling businesses a tablet with an iris scanner onboard and added security layers for Rs 13,000, which is certainly a fraction of the cost at what industry grade tablets sell at.
Is the Samsung Galaxy Tab Iris a business tablet? With Samsung's Knox software, it most certainly is. But it once again makes for another tool for private companies to make more money off citizens. Technically speaking, even the Apple iPad Pro is a business-ready device, and Apple is selling them to everyone (institutions, businesses and consumers).
While this is helping these businesses and government agencies, does it really qualify under the 'Make for India' initiative? One look at Samsung's Make for India page, gives enough evidence that the initiative is targetted at making product for Indian consumers which can make things not only affordable but also make world class products more accessible. Samsung did that wonderfully with the Joy series TVs for instance, making the price point of LED TVs affordable for the masses.
With the Tab Iris, we fail to see how a regular consumer's life would be affected. Instead we were expecting Samsung to release a tablet which would be affordable for the masses – something on the lines of what Datawind has done with Aakash. According to report that was out yesterday regarding the rise in tablet sales in the country, Datawind led the market with 27.6 percent share, followed by Samsung (15.2 percent), Lenovo (13.6 percent), Micromax (11.3 percent) and iBall (8.7 percent).
Surely, if a company that is as trusted as Samsung came out with an affordable tablet for the masses – given the fact that Samsung has been making products in India for many years now, and with the kind of scale at which it makes products – that would have made more sense in this 'Make For India' event that was held yesterday.
Instead of solving the government's problems with 'Digital India' we could have been solving the citizen's problems of adopting the Digital India initiative. By having a mass market tablet for those who cannot afford regular tablets, there are higher chances of getting more citizens familiar with the Digital India initiative, than by releasing an industry-only tablet. "Digital Empowerment of Citizens" yes, that's what it is says, right there on the programme's website.
This tablet will at best empower businesses and the government in areas of identity authentication. Not to mention all those monies that middlemen will make from the pop-up verification stores that will soon begin to surface in towns and cities to "help" citizens get onboard the government's Aadhaar initiative.
Let's hope there are more consumer facing products in the Make for India initiative by Samsung, and this is not just a platform to help industries and governments get subsidised products only.
Tags: Aadhaar, digital india, Make for India, Samsung, Samsung Galaxy Tab Iris
Source: Samsung's Tab Iris is a good idea; but 'Make for India' does not help 'Digital India's' biggest problem
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