Wacom writes new chapter for pens

Wacom is rolling out four new digital tools this fall, ranging from premium professional pens to an inexpensive stylus for doodlers and note-takers, as it feeds growing consumer demand for expanded uses of tablets and smartphones.

The Japan-based company, which houses its headquarters for the Americas in Vancouver, aims to maintain its dominance as a provider of tools for artists and design professionals. It’s also competing in the much larger consumer and education market, offering items at a lower price point that it says are a cut above competitors’ products. Its newest digital pens, some released this month and one set for October release, range in price from $19.99 to $79.99.

Wacom’s has increased its industry and consumer profile in recent years as a provider of pens to Samsung for its Galaxy Note smartphones and Galaxy tablets. Its relationship with Samsung was cemented last year when the South Korean company purchased a 5 percent share of Wacom for $58.2 million.

But the company has focused most heavily on higher-end digital pens that cater to professional artists, graphic and industrial designers, and other professional users. “We are entrenched with artists,” said Doug Little, the company’s Vancouver-based senior public relations manager. “People absolutely have to have our product.”

Wacom has built its reputation of offering a premium product that not only performs well but also is aesthetically pleasing, in the same way that Apple has captured consumer loyalty with the appearance and easy functionality of its products, Little said during a recent demonstration of the new products for The Columbian at the company’s east Vancouver offices.

“Aesthetics do matter,” said Rick Peterson, the company’s consumer products brand director.

Those professional customers can look forward to the new Intuos Creative Stylus 2, to be released next month at a price of $79.95. The brushed aluminum pen features 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity. It uses Bluetooth to connect to iPads and Wacom’s own cloud services. A key advance for the new Intuos stylus is its thinner, more precise tip, a technical advance that had long been sought by Wacom customers,

Other new products are its Bamboo Stylus Fineline, also pressure sensitive, which sells for $59.95 and has 1,024 pressure sensitivity levels when paired with Wacom’s Bamboo Paper app using Bluetooth.

The company’s third-generation Bamboo Stylus pens, at $29.95 for the Duo (with ink pen included) and $19.95 for the Solo (without a pen), are its lowest-cost products. They feature carbon fiber-covered tips that make it easier to use for writing, sketching or screen navigation, the company says. The products are targeted to those who want to take notes or to draw sketches on the run, as well as for classroom use.

Potential uses for the pens are almost endless. At the most basic level, a user can scribble a note or a drawing and shoot it off by email. A landscape designer could draw a sketch of where to place or remove vegetation in a yard, even creating an overlay on a photograph shot on an iPad. Peterson, in a demonstration of the new pens for The Columbian, pulled up photos of his own front yard marked up with landscaping changes he had pitched to his wife.

“People love their iPads, but they constantly want it to do more,” Little said.

Wacom’s Fineline and Bamboo pens won high praise from Darrell Etherington of the consumer magazine TechCrunch. “Wacom’s stylus options are worthy inheritors of its reputation as a maker of drawing and sketching accessories for the discerning computer user, and a sign that this category, while seemingly straightforward, still has room for some innovation,” he wrote. But the praise was not universal, as some comments on that article came from users who complained of glitches and said the new pens failed to meet Wacom’s quality standards.

Wacom, founded in 1983, has about 150 Vancouver employees who work on many aspects of product design and development, marketing and sales. The majority of the company’s sales in the Americas are in the United States, Little said.

But Wacom’s most recent financial forecast, released on July 30, notes that the company anticipates slower-than-expected growth and lower profits in the current fiscal year. The report says that growth of mobile products in general, and smartphones in particular, has stalled. A consumer shift to low-cost phones also hurt the company’s bottom line, according to its company’s financial statement.

Still, Wacom reported increased sales in the United States, and the report singled out the sale of its stand-alone digital pens as a key reason for the overall rise in sales here.