The Portuguese company Probitas registered a brand that will start adding a new line of tablet PCs. The business market, the main target of the company’s activity, is also the main recipient of the products of the Mobi line although, as Christophe Collas explains, the objective is also to position the product for the consumer segment, eventually through partnerships with distributors and telecommunications operators.
MobiOne, the first product in the new line, has an 11.6-inch multi-touch screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768 and Intel Atom processor up to 1.66 GHz, 1 or 2 GB of RAM and up to 64 GB of SSD on disk. In terms of connectivity, the device supports Bluetooth, WiFi and 3G, although the latter feature is available as an option, such as GPS. The operating system at the base of the product is Windows 7 and the equipment also has a built-in camera, with 1.3 megapixels.
THE tablet will be on sale at prices starting at 810.70 euros (for the basic configuration), a value that the CEO of Probitas considers competitive and compatible with the rating of low cost tablet (low cost) that the company wants to associate with the new product line.
“If you compare the price of this product to the values ​​of the business tablet PCs that we usually sell, in the order of 3 thousand euros, or to the estimated price of the new Apple iPad for Portugal, I believe that we have a competitive offer”, says Christophe Collas. The official adds, however, that if he succeeds with the new line the price of Mobi tends to fall.
Anyone who wants to order MobiOne can now do so, directly at the Probitas online store for Portugal, Spain and France and in other countries through partners, but only in November will models be available for delivery. Equipment production took off last week, outside Portugal.
The first 500 buyers to reserve the equipment will have access to a 5 percent discount on the purchase price.
Probitas plans to continue the Mobi line with the launch of new tablets and admits that future versions of the equipment may be more targeted at specific sectors. Education is one of the markets where the company wants to reach and plans to target its next tablet.
The bet is designed to also have a content strand although, as Christophe Collas admits, this goes through a negotiation with publishers that has not yet started. For now, the company is working with suppliers to “define the characteristics of hardware and software” to create a product sufficiently robust to allow satisfactory use of digital school textbooks.
Probitas is also working on the content area in terms of developing an application store that, in a few weeks, will be open to programmers in Portugal and in the other markets where the company is present – France and Spain – or where it operates through partnerships.
The store intends to assert itself as another attraction to consolidate the new product line, although it does not work only with the new equipment, but with a wide range of products.
Probitas has been on the market since 1989 and is positioned as a supplier of niche products to the IT industry, with the main target in the corporate market. The company has other registered brands that offer products for specific market segments.
In early October, the company entered into a partnership with ExoPC to integrate the application layer developed by the company in all Mobi equipment. “The counterpart is that Probitas will respond to all requests from Europe, with the exception of Germany where another company will place similar equipment of its own brand”, explains Christophe Collas.
Under the agreement, “our image and our Mobi One logo are being redesigned at the moment, to give a better visibility to the brand. Mobi One should now present the same communication defined for the ExoPC Slate”, explains the same person in charge .
Other changes inherent to the partnership are the fact that with the integration of the ExoPC User Interface concept, Mobi gains an application layer that “can be installed in any tablet touch so that the user has direct shortcuts to the applications (without having to perform the traditional Start-> programs-> etc …) step and that he can do everything with his finger “.
ExoPC created the concept and is working with several companies worldwide to bring it to the market in the form of a finished product, with differences that vary between partners. In the case of the product that Probitas intends to launch, the company guarantees that there is a set of specificities that characterize its version of ExoPC. Among them the type of screen, type of memory, disk, 3G and others that were defined directly by the company with the OEM responsible for production.
Editorial Note: The tablet that Probitas is preparing to launch on the Portuguese market applies the ExoPC concept, presented earlier this year. This information was revealed after the publication of the news, meanwhile updated to account for the partnership and what characterizes it.
