China is on pace to become the world's most important source for innovation by 2020, overtaking both the U.S. and Japan, according to a public opinion survey conducted by drugmaker AstraZeneca that will be released next week.

According to the survey results, which were pre-released earlier this week, the U.S. is currently viewed as the world's most innovative country, according to 30 percent of the 6,000 people who were polled, followed by Japan with 25 percent and China at 14 percent.

Forget about spending $500 for an iPad. India's human resource development minister, Kapil Sibal, has unveiled a $35 tablet that the country hopes will go into production next year.

Compared to Apple's hot-ticket tablet, it may not have equivalent functionality -- or a hard disk, for that matter -- but at that manufacturing price it's practically disposable.  "We have reached a stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity -- all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything," said Sibal at a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday.