It seems 2012 will be a year of low-cost tablets. Close of the heels of India launching Aakash, the world's cheapest tablet PC for students, the non-profit organisation One Laptop per Child (OLPC) along with Marvell has unveiled XO-3 tablet, its $100 tab, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, US.
OLPC or One Laptop per Child makes low-cost portable computing devices primarily for school kids in emerging countries.
The tablet will come in two display versions: a standard 8-inch 1024 x 768 LCD and an 8-inch PixelQi 1024×768 resolution sunlight-readable display.
Powered by Marvell's ARMADA PXA618 processor, the tablet packs 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. The tablet also includes a memory card slot, USB and audio ports.
The tablet will also come with a unique charging circuitry which lets it charge directly by solar panels, hand cranks and other alternative power sources.
As for the operating system, XO-3 tablet will run either Google's Android OS or OLPC's own Linux-based Sugar OS. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC reportedly claims that the device can be sold at as low as $100 depending on the configuration.