Kno hedging bets with single screen tablet
The start-up, which showed a dual-screen tablet concept in June, says it also plans to have a cheaper, single-screen option.
Kno, which showed off a fancy dual-screen tablet for education earlier this year, said today that it also has plans for a cheaper, single-screen option.
The company is aiming at the education market and had touted the two-screen option as a great way to read and take notes at the same time. However, in announcing the new model on Monday, the company acknowledged that the added glass also adds cost to a product aimed at a cost-sensitive market.
"Even though the Kno pays for itself in 13 months, the smaller up-front investment of the single screen version will allow more students to use our learning platform," CEO Osman Rashid said in a statement.
The company promised that both the single-screen and two-screen models will be available to consumers for preorder later this year, though it still hasn't announced pricing and other details. Rashid said in June that the company was aiming to get the two-screen model to sell for less than $1,000.
Even if the company does hit that price, the Kno is still not seen as a replacement for a laptop. Instead, Rashid outlined a world in which the Kno is used for on-the-go reading and notetaking.
"We believe the laptop is becoming the new desktop," he said in the June interview. "It is going to stay in your dorm or in your home. This is all you need to carry around."
Here's a video interview I did with Rashid showing off the dual-screen version at the D: All Things Digital conference in June.