While there's no doubt that Apple's iPad (that started the tablet revolution) still remains the most popular tablet PC, quite a few other tablets are also gaining popularity. In India, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is doing extremely well. The other popular ones are Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Motorola Xoom, BlackBerry PlayBook, LG Optimus Pad, HTC Flyer, etc. Not to be outdone, Indian companies have launched their own tablet PCs at less than half the price. Here, Chandragupta Amritkar tries to focus on some of the Indian tablets.

The last few months have seen quite a few of Indian tablet PCs being launched, especially those by telecom companies such as Reliance and Bharti, with the hope that more subscribers sign up for their data plans. Until now, the key obstacle had been exorbitant gadget prices but we innovative Indians have brought the prices to around Rs.10,000/- making it affordable to the middle class as well. Some of the prominent ones are featured in the following paragraphs.

OlivePad V-T100 web price at Rs 15, 990/-

The OlivePad VT-100 from Olive Telecom is powered by Android 2.2 OS and is a 7" 3G tablet that's also a quad-band 2G phone. Powered by an ARM11 600MHz processor it features 512MB RAM, 512MB in-built flash memory, and microSD expandability up to 32GB, aside from a CMOS 3MP camera and webcam. It also has full Flash support, as well as WiFi (802.11b/g), Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR), and microUSB connectivity. It weighs only 410 grams and has a Li-polymer battery that gives 7 hours of talk time. With in-built GPS, the OlivePad offers Google Maps and MapMyIndia navigation. It's a tablet PC with an entertainment device, a GPS navigator, a smartphone and an Ebook reader, all rolled in one.

Beetel Magiq at Rs 9,999/-

The Magiq from Beetel (a part of Bharti Telecom which also owns Airtel) is a 3G Google Android tablet has a 7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels.

The Magiq has Android 2.2 Froyo (although the Honeycomb 3.0 OS would have made it ideal for tablet PCs) and powered by a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which enables high-speed processing. It has a 2200mAh battery. It has a 2 mega pixel rear camera with HD video recording and image quality of 1600 x 1200 pixels and a front camera with VGA quality. It comes with 8 GB internal memory (expandable up to 16 Gb).

Reliance 3G Tab at Rs 12,999/-

Reliance Communications has launched an Android tablet with 3G network support. The device is priced at Rs 12,999/- and is available bundled with 3G tariff plans. The Reliance 3G Tab, manufactured by ZTE, is based on Android 2.3 featuring a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen. The tablet comes with 512 MB RAM and a microSD external storage, weighing just 389 gram. The tablet also has a 2.0 megapixel rear camera and a VGA front camera. Other features include video recorder, Wi-Fi Hotspot,Bluetooth voice calling, GPS, FM radio, alarm, speaker phone, MobileTV, SMS, MMS. The company is currently offering a free 4 GB SD card but customers can upgrade the memory up to 32 GB. The display is 800 X 480 pixels and battery is 3400mAH, Li-On.

Mercury mTab at Rs 9499/-

Mercury launched its 7-inch tablet PC, mTab, running Android 2.3 Gingerbread and having a 1.2 GHz Telechip 8803 Cortex-A8 processor with three cores. Though it has a capacitive touch screen with multi-touch support, its resolution is 800