Company Opens Windows for Business Tablet Use

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Company Opens Windows for Business Tablet Use
Martin Smekal

Consumers are crazy about tablets these days. But a Torrance company began making handheld, touch-screen computers for businesses several years before the iPad fueled the current frenzy.

TabletKiosk LLC makes and sells tablet PCs, minicomputers that run on full operating systems such as Windows and Linux and use touch screens instead of keyboards. Customers include hospitals and casinos that need computers in a smaller, more portable size.

Tablet PCs are different from the new generation of consumer tablets, such as the iPad, because they work similar to a desk-top computer while consumer tablets run on mobile operating systems, and are used mostly for reading, Internet access and entertainment.

Because TabletKiosk focuses on making devices for businesses, Chief Executive Martin Smekal isn’t worried about competition from the iPad and similar products. In fact, he believes those devices are driving new customers to TabletKiosk.

“At one point we were a little nervous, but the expansion and explosion of the tablet community has been great for us,” he said. “People now understand what we do.”

Smekal said he has seen an increase in customer interest in tablet PCs since Apple launched the iPad in 2010.

“When we first started in this business, we had to explain to people what a tablet PC was,” he said. “The consumer marketplace has helped educate the community about what a tablet is.”

The company’s flagship product is the Sahara Slate PC, which retails between $1,000 and $2,300. That’s a much higher price point than the iPad, which ranges from $500 to $830, because TabletKiosk’s devices typically come with software and accessories, such as an attachable credit card reader, designed on order from specific customers.

TabletKiosk rarely sells directly to customers and instead works primarily with third-party resellers that tailor a device to a customer’s needs by adding specific software or accessories.

Most of the company’s customers are in the medical industry. Several blood banks have donors fill out their information on TabletKiosk products, for example.

TabletKiosk has also sold devices to a high-end watch chain, which uses the tablet PCs in its stores to show customers pictures of inventory that isn’t in the store, and Cantor Gaming in Las Vegas, which gives customers tablet PCs to place real-time bets using Cantor’s sports betting software.

The company sometimes directly sells to businesses that rebrand the products with their own names.

For example, one of TabletKiosk’s resellers is CareWorx, an Orangeville, Ontario, company that provides technology to long-term care and retirement homes. Nurses at those facilities use the devices at patients’ bedsides to record when they’ve given them medication.

Steve Robertson, president of CareWorx, said he chose TabletKiosk’s devices because the company fit the product to its needs, such as extending battery life.

“They’ve taken our suggestions and wish list over the last several years and brought it into their broader product offering,” Robertson said. “They’ve remained a stable platform that’s cost effective and flexible in working with us.”

Competitive scene

Although a growing number of companies are looking to create iPad competitors for the consumer market, a much smaller number are competing in the tablet PC market.

Motion Computing in Austin, Texas, is a bigger player than TabletKiosk, analysts and researchers say. Japanese computer hardware giants Fujitsu and Panasonic also make tablet PCs.

The market for tablet PCs is small, said Ken Dulaney, vice president of mobile computing and an analyst for research firm Gartner in San Jose. And TabletKiosk’s biggest challenge could be moving beyond its small-company image.

“We’ve had customers mention them and the biggest thing they’re concerned with is assessing the risk of a small company,” Dulaney said.

Smekal would not disclose revenue, but said it increased 37 percent last year and is on target to increase by 40 percent this year.

Even though industry analysts view tablets and tablet PCs as separate markets, tablet devices have started to encroach on the tablet PC market, said David Krebs, a research practice director at VDC Research in Natick, Mass.

“These tablets are largely being positioned as content consumption devices, but they’re also being looked at as enterprise applications,” he said. “Today I’d say the majority of the adoption of this new tablet has been for customer-facing applications in retail, hospitality and transportation. Even in health care we’re seeing these products crop up.”

Smekal acknowledged that consumer tablets have cut into his home automation customers: businesses that sell the devices to control home entertainment systems or air-conditioning and heating systems. But most of his customers want tablet PCs instead of consumer devices, he said.

“Some enterprises have gone to the Apple platform and then come back because they’ve found that it’s not for the enterprise industry today,” he said.

New version

Smekal founded TabletKiosk out of the ashes of a Taipei, Taiwan, tablet PC company called PaceBlade.

With three business partners, he bought the rights to distribute PaceBlade’s products in the United States in the late 1990s. But in 2002, the company ran into financial troubles and shut down operations. So Smekal contacted PaceBlade’s manufacturers and struck a deal to make a new version of PaceBlade’s tablet PC under the name TabletKiosk.

Today, the 37-person company continues to work with manufacturers in Taiwan and also operates a small research and development team there. Final assembly, custmization and repairs happen at the company’s Torrance headquarters.

The tablet PC market has been slow to evolve because businesses upgrade their technology only about every 36 months, much less frequently than individual consumers who buy new versions of products every 15 months.

But consumer tablets’ thinner size and some of their upgraded features could influence the design of future tablet PC products, Krebs said.

“It’s driving a lot of new expectations in terms of what the interface should look like,” he said. “The whole idea of touch and multitouch screens is now becoming much more of a requirement for these rugged tablet markets.”

Smekal said TabletKiosk is developing a thinner, lighter device that will be closer to an iPad. But despite the boom in the consumer tablet market, he said he’s not looking to change his business.

“We have no intention of moving into the consumer area,” he said. “We’re going to stay focused on this niche area because we think this market will continue to grow for us.”

TabletKiosk LLC

FOUNDED: 2003

HEADQUARTERS: Torrance

CORE BUSINESS: Makes tablet PCs for the business market.

EMPLOYEES: 37 (up from 33 last year).

GOAL: To be market leader in selling tablet PCs to businesses.

THE NUMBERS: Revenue was up 37 percent last year; expects revenue growth of about 40 percent this year.

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