Bangalore: Encore Software, the firm, which helped design the Simputer, today (Dec 1, 2004) said it aims to sell over 50,000 units of the low cost hand held device in the next 12 months.

Encore which has funded the development of Simputer by IISc (Indian Institute of Science) professors has put in the public domain all its software and hardware specifications of the Simputer, which is driven by the open source Linux software.

"In the next 12 months, we aim to sell over 50,000 units of Simputers, including about 25 to 30 per cent for the export market," Encore Software founder chairman and CEO Vinay Deshpande told reporters in Bangalore at the Linux Bangalore 2004, India's largest open source conference.

Encore has supplied 4,000 units of Simputer for various projects across the country, both to the Government and the corporate sector, he said, besides exporting to the West Asian and Far East Asian countries.

"We will soon export to the United States," Deshpande said.

He said Encore has developed another low cost computing device called 'Sathi', specifically for the use by the Indian Army and another product 'Chhota', for sales force automation, ticketing, utility billing and health surveys.