UK company bucks Tablet trend

By Simon Aughton

Posted on 1 Aug 2003 at 11:15

A leading supplier of ICT equipment to UK schools has succeeded where most of the big-name tablet vendors have failed, shipping more than double the industry average of Tablet PCs.

RM says that tablets account for over 15 per cent of its notebook sales, compared to an industry average of between five and 10 per cent. The company anticipates that while its notebook sales will grow as they are increasingly preferred to desktop machines by schools, the tablet share of this will increase, because they are ideally suited to the education environment.

'The growth of Tablet PC sales to education doesn't surprise us,' said RM spokesman David Hunt. 'Very early on we saw the great potential for this technology in education and worked with Microsoft to bring an appropriate solution to the market. We also worked with our hardware partners to ensure we provided the product at a price point that was attractive to education and this in fact resulted in what we believe is the cheapest Tablet PC pricing in Europe if not the world.'

RM supplies two tablet models - a £799 student version and a £999 teacher version - both equipped with wireless networking. The company also includes software to enable teachers to electronically collate, mark and return work.

'Both teachers and pupils in our trials have endorsed the Tablets and are great evangelists for them,' Hunt added. 'The handwriting recognition software has had amazing results in helping motivate pupils to improve their handwriting skills. Teachers have also reported that the interactive nature of the devices has helped engage pupils more closely with their lessons and work.

We recently reported on research which found that Europe wide sales of Tablet PCs declined 23 per cent in the second quarter after their November 2002 launch.