Pakistani Military Releases Its iPad Rival

When it comes to marketing the iPad internationally, Pakistan is not high on top of Apple's list.

In the troubled South Asian country, piracy is rampant and much of the population struggles to afford basic rations, let alone the luxuries of a personal computer wannabe.

Still there is an audience for Apple products in Pakistan. The country's young population has created a black market for iPhones, iPods and even iPads.

Apple openly sells its product in neighboring India -- Pakistan's main political and economic rival.

The problem is because Apple does little to no official business in the country, the after market cost for a tablet computer in Pakistan is out of the reach of most.

That's where the Pakistani military comes in.

The national organization does more than just protect the country's sovereignty in Pakistan. The military is intimately involved within Pakistan's political and economic structure.

The military's latest project is putting an affordable Android-powered tablet computer into the hands of the masses in Pakistan.

The Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, one of the largest manufacturing facilities in the world, is building a 7-inch tablet called the PAC-PAD with Hong Kong-based Innavtek.

"It's about using spare capacity," Sohail Kalim, PAC's sales director, told Associated Press. "There are 24 hours in a day, do we waste them or use them to make something? The profits go to the welfare of the people here. There are lots of auditors. They don't let us do any hanky-panky here."

The pad is an entry level tablet that features a 1 GHS processor, 256 megabytes of RAM and it comes with a hard drive between 2GB and 16 GB.

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