Micromax's FunBook to Vie for Share in Tablet PC Market

New Delhi: Mobile phone maker Micromax today forayed into the burgeoning tablet PC market with its FunBook' priced at 6,499. The device, targetted specially at the education sector, will be manufactured in India at the company's manufacturing unit in Haridwar. "We have a manufacturing capacity of one lakh units per month and we are already looking at increasing that number. That should give an idea to the kind of numbers we are looking at for the device," Micromax CEO Deepak Mehrotra told reporters here. The company would also undertake 360-degree marketing campaign for the product, which would see Micromax making "significant" investments in, Mehrotra said without divulging further details. The seven-inch FunBook is based on the Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich platform and has a 1.22 GHz processor, 0.3 MP VGA front camera, 4 GB internal memory, expandable upto 32GB. The company has partnered with Pearson and Everonn to make educational content available on the tablet PC. "Users need to just pay Rs 799 for educational content of a particular class and they can get access to the multimedia content from our partners," Mehrotra said adding that the partners would also help in taking the device to various educational institutions. Micromax has joined companies like HCL Infosystems and WishTel, which have launched tablet PCs, targetted at the education sector. Following the government's low-cost Aakash device, these companies are tying up with educational organisations to deliver multimedia content to students.