Netbooks have struggled to take off in India, despite the population. It’s estimated that this year will see 300,000 netbooks sold compared to last year’s 40,000, which is an improvement but, based on the population, of around one billion, Liliputing describe this number as being “peanuts”. To change this trend, India will be the next country to bundle netbooks with 3G data plans. Asus and Dell are currently working with wireless carriers to make this possible in India.

Over the course of the contract, the netbook can end up costing more than buying it up front but, you also get the data usage and some consider it a way to pay for netbooks in instalments.

Having given up on its fantasies of creating a $10 laptop back in February, India has finally placed orders for a total of 250,000 units of OLPC laptops for its school children. OLPC India’s CEO Satish Jha comments that up to 3 million OLPC laptops are expected to be shipped to India before the end of the year, but for now the only sure figure is 250K. Whether the OLPC laptops that will be delivered to India are running on AMD chips or VIA C7-M processors wasn’t specified, however, it’s sure to be light years ahead of any $10 laptop they could have put together.

PC World via Ars Technica

Asus has just launched the svelte Eee PC 1002HA out in India. It is the same netbook variant of the Eee PC 1002HA found in other parts of the world, and features a 10.2-inch screen, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, 160GB HDD and 1GB of RAM. It will come preloaded with Windows XP, like many other netbooks, and is expected to be priced similarly to Eee PC 1002HA sold elsewhere, though no exact pricing details were provided.

Via Electronic Pulp

The rectangular white object pictured above, with the many different wires sticking out of its sides, reminds me of a lot of things. It reminds me of a USB modem, an external hard drive, a USB card reader, and more. But no matter how many things I think of upon seeing this thing, I’m not likely to think that this is actually a laptop. And I doubt if anyone would.

According to the source, this photo was taken at the official unveiling of India’s $10 laptop, which sounded good on paper, but upon closer inspection of the pitch appeared to be a really bad joke. In the end, there was no $10 laptop, there aren’t any plans to make one, and the closest we can get to it is this “computing device that can store a user’s data and connect to a laptop.” See there, it connects to a laptop itself. And stores data. Sounds more like a USB flash drive to me. But no matter how they do it, if they can, I would love to see this $10 laptop. No, really. It would be hilarious.

IT Cafe via Liliputing