Everyone knows that the much-hyped Aakash tablet project has been nothing but failure, however Datawind continues to try and capitalize on its name. The company recently recently issued a press release claiming that it has finally shipped 1 lakh units to the Indian government as promised in the initial tender.

In fact, only 74,700 units of the tablet have reached IIT Bombay, which is dealing with Aakash tablet project, rest are still waiting at some transporter.

“We have supplied all units of Aakash tablets under contract to the government. It will be with the transporter by midnight tonight and will be processed through Letter of Credit documentation by IIT-Bombay,” Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli said.

Even if we take the official announcement data as the starting point, Datawind took around seven months for ship just one lakh tablets, which was supposed to be initial/pilot order, and government had announced to get 220 million more units. Now, we know that those 220 million units will no longer be seeing the light of the day.

It is not just the case with Aakash 2; the original Aakash tablet also never reached students. According to whatever little information is available online, Datawind shipped some thousand units of Aakash to IIT Rajasthan and Bombay, after which there were lot of issues and no more units of the tablet were shipped.

The company is already talking about Aakash 4 and what not and we know if indeed Indian government announces something like Aakash 4 , it will also be an utter failure and nothing more.

Story timeline:

Aakash tablet announcement – October 5, 2011

Story of India’s $35 Aakash tablet – October 5, 2011

Datawind hopes to sell 15 million Aakash Tablets this year – January 6, 2012 – (15 MILLION – LOL)

ICA criticizes Aakash Tablet, suggests bigger firms to be put in-charge – January 23, 2012

Aakash 2 tablet debuts with 1GHz processor, will be sold to students for INR 1,132 – November 11, 2012