The Notion Ink Adam

Love them or hate them, but you cannot ignore Apple's products. The Ipod, Iphone and the Ipad have not just become iconic products of this decade, but have redefined the industry and become synonymous with the product itself. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I say music player = iPod and tablet = iPad. Apple has die hard fanboys, who swear by its products and have an almost blind adoration for the  person largely behind them, Steve Jobs. Few companies or people evoke such strong emotions or reactions as Apple and Steve jobs.

Your Electronic Life as Apple sees it!

After the spectacular success of the Ipad, it is natural that other companies want to have their share of the 'tablet' pie. But competing with the likes of Apple is no mean task, though lots of companies have tried, and failed (Zune, anyone?). Interestingly Google has succeeded quite a bit in arresting the Iphone's free-rise, by developing the android mobile platform, and giving it away, for free! Android is already the dominant smartphone platform in recently sold devices, and 2nd in place behind the symbian considering all existing smartphone devices.

Smartphone market - all devices,  end of 2010. Source: Gartner, via Wikipedia

Google could do it because they have the resources, and the engineers to take Apple head on. But have you heard about the company Notion Ink? It is a Bangalore based company started by a bunch of IITians and some MBAs and have developed the Adam tablet. It has a lot of features which Ipad ignored; like Flash, USB ports, multitasking (runs Android), a Camera (swiveling one at that) and HDMI ports. Its screen is better (Pixel Qi), the battery lasts longer and it arguably has a better processor (the Nvidia Tegra 250). And did I mention its cheaper? Seems too good to be true, doesn't it?

The Notion Ink ADAM - a first of its kind (as claimed by the company)

The company did have its fair share of troubles, as you would expect of a penniless start-up trying to take on the might of the majors. Their investors walked out on them some months ago, and reportedly their new investors are Reliance, one of the biggest conglomerates of India. They had demoed the tablet almost a year back at the CES 2010, but took almost a year to reach production quality. The company was highly secretive about its features, specifications and did not reveal true pictures of the tablet, releasing instead only mock-ups through the blog maintained by the company's CEO, Rohan Shravan (link). This lead to suspicion amongst the tech bloggers and community at large with some going so far as to call it vaporware. 

Rohan retaliated by posting videos of the tablet in action, one video per day, which ended all doubts and speculation about the existence of the product at least. The pre-orders have already sold out. The tablet no doubt looks promising, the only worry I (and most analysts) have is whether the Adam and the company itself can live up to the hype. Meeting huge production deadlines, customer support, logistics, feature development, rolling out updates, all these can take a toll on the company. The CEO seems to be a smart person, but I only hope the company won't be a victim of its own success.

I hope for the sake of the tablet market and the Indian tech industry, the Notion Ink be a stupendous success. Wish them all the best!