Wacom Europe GmbH, the EMEA headquarters of global market leader in pen tablets, interactive pen displays, digital pens and signature solutions, today announced their participation in this year‘s GITEX Technology Week. Starting October 20th (Hall 2, Stand C2-5) Wacom will showcase its recently launched new products for creative professionals, consumers and industry solutions.
“Looking at the expected growth rate in Middle East’s Entertainment and Media Market and being aware of the fact that the market size ranks number five in the EMEA region already, we considered this region to even increase our market presence and the awareness for our products,” Wacom’s General Sales Manager for Eastern Europe, Russia, Middle East and Africa, Alexander Maliyenko, pointed out.
At GITEX, Wacom will present its full and nearly completely new range of products. Already at the centre of interest are the newly launched Cintiq Companion products, both the Windows 8 and the Android version closing the gap between the Cintiq interactive pen displays and a fully-fledged PC and media tablet respectively. Another member of the new mobile family is the equally well responded Intuos Creative Stylus, being the first stylus to offer the Wacom drawing experience with a pressure sensitive pen to the iPad.
“Having so many new products to present in all business areas, we expect this year’s GITEX to attract many new customers,” Maliyenko, added. As all the new products will be available for visitors to test and try, GITEX offers a nice opportunity to learn about Wacom products first hand.
Staying on top of evolving trends in the creative community and responding to frequent requests from professional customers, Wacom extends the creative experience from the desktop to a mobile environment with the new Cintiq Companion line of creative tablets. The Cintiq Companion line, available in two models, enables creative professionals to work wherever they want.
The Cintiq Companion runs Windows 8 and full versions of creative software and offers everything a customer would expect from Wacom’s Cintiq products. The Cintiq Companion Hybrid, on the other hand, is a traditional Cintiq when plugged into a Mac or PC, but when used as a mobile device, it works as a stand-alone Android tablet with enough power to do light sketching and start creative processes with suitable apps.
The new tablets were developed to bring unprecedented freedom to the creative workflow. They also ensure a distinct Cintiq experience even in mobile use, leveraging key elements of the Cintiq products as for example the full HD display with touch control, the Wacom Pro Pen with 2048 levels of pressure and tilt sensitivity as well as the well-known ExpressKeys to shortcut specific procedures.
The Cintiq Companion offers top performance hard- and software to enable creating in a variety of environments such as studios, customer offices, collaborative meetings or any other place. Providing an all-purpose, mobile workstation, it is a fully-fledged Windows 8 tablet PC, powered by a 3rd generation Intel Core processor and Intel HD Graphics 4000. One is available with 8 GB memory and 256 GB SSD with Windows 8 and the other with 8 GB memory, 512 GB SSD with Windows 8 Pro.
Plugged into a PC or Mac it offers all features of the Cintiq 13HD. When disconnected it is a digital sketchpad on the go for the likes of illustrators and designers who want to draw, sketch and paint when mobile. The tablet comes with a powerful Nvidia Tegra 4 processor, Android Jellybean and specially designed software such as the new Wacom Creative Canvas for painting and sketching and Wacom Manga Canvas for the first phases of Manga creation.
For further refinement when back in the studio, rough images can be easily transferred to a computer or shared directly to popular cloud services with the easy and pre-loaded ASTRO File Manager. Two versions of the Cintiq Companion Hybrid are available, a 16 GB version and a 32 GB version.
To enable a truly mobile working style, the Cintiq Companion family packs some impressive mobile communications features such as WiFi connectivity, Bluetooth (version 4.0 for Cintiq Companion and version 3.0 for Cintiq Companion Hybrid), front/rear HD cameras (2 M pixels/8 M pixels), stereo headset jack and microphone for hosting calls or streaming movies.
“The new Cintiq Companion line enables mobile creatives to carry out their jobs without compromising on the high performance required for delivering professional-grade design and artistic output,” Rüdiger Spohrer, Wacom Europe’s Vice-President Marketing, underlines. “This is a truly ground-breaking product line that redefines the way creative professionals work, empowering artists and designers to immerse themselves in their work without being confined to a traditional studio or office.”
New Intuos Creative Stylus is a pressure-sensitive digital pen for sketching, drawing and painting on an iPad (Mini, 3 and newer). Offering the best drawing experience on an iPad, the new stylus allows the ad agency creative designer to do a quick concept drawing on the train, or the art student to sketch out an idea before class.
With iPads used more and more in a creative surrounding, the Intuos Creative Stylus fills a gap in the workflow. Connected via Bluetooth 4.0 it works seamlessly with the iPad and a series of creative apps such as Autodesk SketchBook Pro for iPad, ArtRage (by Ambient Design), Bamboo Paper, ProCreate (by Savage Interactive) and Psykopaint.
Providing the power to produce professional results on an iPad, the Intuos Creative Stylus offers 2048 pressure levels to reproduce the feel and artistic control of traditional brushes and markers. So it is ideal for sketching, illustrating and image editing. It is also highly responsive, even reacting to light strokes, while rejecting unintentional touches when used with compatible creative apps that integrate Wacom’s industry-leading technology.
The Intuos Creative Stylus is designed with a brushed aluminium housing in two colour versions – black and blue/black – and ergonomically shaped thanks to the iconic flared tip, which makes it particularly comfortable when used for many hours. Additionally, artists can save time with the convenient shortcut buttons. Highlighting its mobile credentials further, a thin but powerful AAAA battery ensures days of constant use. The Creative Stylus comes with a convenient case that holds the stylus, spare battery and two replacement nibs.
“iPad users are often on the lookout for new and improved tools that can offer an authentic experience,” says Hartmut Woerrlein, head of Global Product Management at Wacom. “We’ve had lots of customer requests for a pen solution that adapts pressure-sensitivity to the iPad, as this is something they’re used to when working with our pen tablets. It’s also great that we offer an iPad app that is fully compatible with the new Creative Stylus. As the pioneer in pen technology, we’ve used our extensive experience to develop the Intuos Creative Stylus and we’re excited to see what artists achieve with it.”
