Smart is good – Wise is better! - South African Tablet Device |
 |
 |
 |
|
It’s the brainchild of Wise Tablets, a locally-based IT company that’s been in the game for more than 20 years – and has recently developed what it describes as a ‘South African made tablet, made for South Africans’. In a nutshell, it is called the Wise Touch 1, it is available in 7” and 10”screen formats as well as a very popular 8” and 9” range and it runs on the Android 2.3 platform. What makes the Wise Touch stand out from the crowd, however, is not what’s inside the casing – it’s what’s pre-loaded on the device. As you would expect, the Wise Touch gives users access to the global android market with thousands of applications, but the pre-loaded, localized content comes to life via the Wise Shopping Mall and Business Park that features 10+ category departments and more than 80+ different applications offering direct access to a wide variety of local retailers, travel shops, banking, food courts, videos, TV, movies, toys and more. As Wise Management explains, from the moment you take it out the box, you can “browse a selection of local retail stores with up-coming functionality that enables you to read a magazine or today’s newspaper in the magazine store or order takeaway meals from your favourite restaurant in the food court - all from the comfort of your own home.” In essence it’s an easy, interactive and (thanks to the tailor-made, localized content) unique shopping experience. But there’s a second pre-loaded content world at the heart of the Wise Touch project – The Education Centre. Focused on learning and education, the applications within the Education Centre offer a variety of educational content, including a public school syllabus. All of them will be bundled free with the Wise Touch – and numerous universities, private schools and colleges have jumped on board to ensure that the educational content offered continues to expand. “We aim to make the tablet a practical tool for education and so work directly with educational institutions to develop their own content and use it on the Education Center which provides a standard way of viewing educational content via a removable SD card. Interactive content is very impressive and supplied from Siyavula. This content sets a benchmark for using existing school text books and making them fully interactive with video content included” explains Wise Management. This is particularly relevant in a country where the cost of technology is often a hurdle to success. As Wise Management goes on to explain, “Our intent with the Wise project was to focus on a completely different market segment. The 10” tablet will retail for less than R3 500, the 7” 3G tablet, which we expect will be the most popular, will retail for less than R2500 – and the entry level 7” Wi-Fi device will cost less than R1700.” All of which makes South Africa’s very first homegrown tablet device a very compelling and affordable package. The Wise Touch will be available nationwide in early 2012 and when it does, there’s no doubt it will change the way local consumers are able to interact and engage with the planet’s most exciting consumer technology. The question is: how will it Touch you? For further information, contact Wise Tablets on: Tel. 012 667 8888, Cell: 082 659 3035, email info@wisetablets.co.za or visit the website at www.wisetablets.co.za Contributed by: |
January 2012 will go down as a landmark month for South Africa’s growing technology sector with the launch of our first ever ‘localized PC tablet device’ The first time the world saw a ‘tablet’ was in January 2010. And here we are, just 24 months later and South Africa is about to give birth to its very own ‘lean-back-and-enjoy’ personal computing device.