India launched on Wednesday the world's cheapest tablet computer priced at only $46 amid doubts that its intended users, poor students, will love and keep the device that has features way off that of an iPad's.

An initial 100,000 units of the Android 2.2-run Aakash, which means "sky," was bought by the Indian government to be given away for free to university and college students as part of a pilot test of the device.

At the launching in New Delhi, Canadian maker DataWind showed Aakash's features: a seven-inch (18-centimeter) touchscreen with 800x480 resolution, 256 MB of RAM, Wi-Fi Internet function, a multimedia player, standard headphones jack, 2100mAh battery with 2-3 hours life, 2GB storage card, two USB ports and pre-loaded apps that supports DOC, DOCX, PDF and PPTX formats. The weight is 350 grams.

Only 8 percent of India's 1.2 billion population has Internet access and officials hope the Aakash will increase the number of Indian netizens. The government is targeting to distribute 10 million Aakash in the next few years.

"The rich have access to the digital world, the poor and ordinary have been excluded. Aakash will end that digital divide," Telecoms and Education Minister Kapil Sibal said, according to The Times of India.

"We've created a product that will finally bring affordable computing and Internet access to the masses," AFP quoted DataWind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli as saying. Tuli said the Aakash price tag may eventually drop to $10 each.

Initial reactions to the Aakash from students indicate it needed refinements because it is not close to the benchmark features of Apple's iPad.

The latest version of iPad runs faster with its dual-core A5 chip, weighs 603 grams, is 0.86 centimetres thin and has a battery life of 10 hours. It has two cameras for video calling and high-definition video recording, 9.7-inch display and Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. The operating system, iOS 5, is the most advanced and capable of supporting 140,000 apps.
The iPad sells at $600 in India.