Last month MIPS announced the $125 Karbonn Smart Tab 1 tablet with Jelly Bean, which runs on the MIPS-Based™ JZ4770 1.2 Ghz chip from Ingenic. Targeting the low-price market, the Karbonn tablet is the cheapest in India right now, and the only available tablet with Jelly Bean.

Lower-priced tablets are more marketable in emerging economies like India, given users' preference for cheaper devices. However, given the low price, the processors that run cheap devices will usually be underpowered, too. This often results in poor user experience.

So if Indian customers want at least a decent tablet experience with a very cheap tablet like the Karbonn Smart Tab 1, they need to make sure it has at least Jelly Bean on it. Otherwise, they might become disappointed with the tablet's performance.

Of course there are still things like cheap displays with poor viewing angles that can reduce the enjoyment of using such a tablet, but the most frustrating would usually be processing performance.

MIPS' release of the Jelly Bean source code would benefit other tablet-makers that use the MIPS platform. Developers and manufacturers can already start using custom Jelly Bean ROMs for these devices. Now more of India's tablets can benefit from the speed and smoothness that Jelly Bean offers.

If you're a developer, you can check out the Jelly Bean release notes, or MIPS' Github account.