NY Times
Most of the companies that hope to take on Apple in the white-hot market for tablets are industry giants like Dell, Google, HP, Microsoft and Samsung. But among the startups looking to become tablet contenders, Kno stands out.
I first wrote about Kno in June, when the company unveiled a dual-screen tablet aimed at college students. The knock against the chunky, 14-inch screen was its heft; it weighs 5.5 pounds, or nearly four times more than Apple’s iPad, and each slab was more than half an inch thick.
It seems as if the criticism was heard. On Monday, months before the first tablet, called the Kno, will ship, the company is unveiling a second model. The new Kno is a single-screen version of the previous device. Both are expected to begin shipping in December.
“From the college perspective, the overwhelming feedback is that the dual panel is great, but some students think a single panel is better for them,” said Osman Rashid, a founder and the chief executive of Kno. “At the end of the day, we don’t want to lock anyone out of our system because of form factor.” Mr. Rashid said the single-panel model is likely to appeal to the K-12 market in particular.
Kno’s mission is to create not only hardware, but also a software system geared for students that will allow them to read textbooks, take notes and perform other tasks. The software system is expected to work not only on Kno’s tablets, but also on PCs, iPads and other devices.
Shedding half its bulk and weight is certainly a move in the right direction for Kno.
Among the tablet’s biggest fans is Marc Andreessen, the Netscape founder who is now a venture capitalist and a director at eBay, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard and Skype. Mr. Andreessen recently led a $46 million round of financing for Kno. That brought the total raised by the startup to $55 million.
Whether that is enough to help Kno break into the tablet market remains to be seen.
I first wrote about Kno in June, when the company unveiled a dual-screen tablet aimed at college students. The knock against the chunky, 14-inch screen was its heft; it weighs 5.5 pounds, or nearly four times more than Apple’s iPad, and each slab was more than half an inch thick.
It seems as if the criticism was heard. On Monday, months before the first tablet, called the Kno, will ship, the company is unveiling a second model. The new Kno is a single-screen version of the previous device. Both are expected to begin shipping in December.
“From the college perspective, the overwhelming feedback is that the dual panel is great, but some students think a single panel is better for them,” said Osman Rashid, a founder and the chief executive of Kno. “At the end of the day, we don’t want to lock anyone out of our system because of form factor.” Mr. Rashid said the single-panel model is likely to appeal to the K-12 market in particular.
Kno’s mission is to create not only hardware, but also a software system geared for students that will allow them to read textbooks, take notes and perform other tasks. The software system is expected to work not only on Kno’s tablets, but also on PCs, iPads and other devices.
Shedding half its bulk and weight is certainly a move in the right direction for Kno.
Among the tablet’s biggest fans is Marc Andreessen, the Netscape founder who is now a venture capitalist and a director at eBay, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard and Skype. Mr. Andreessen recently led a $46 million round of financing for Kno. That brought the total raised by the startup to $55 million.
Whether that is enough to help Kno break into the tablet market remains to be seen.
