Last Saturday I attended Lenovo Intel Invent meant to educate mums and women on Lenovo’s 2 in 1 devices in the Kenyan market. Before you ask, Lenovo uses Intel Processors for the devices and hence it make sense for them to have a joint event. At the same time Intel has digital literacy project aimed at helping women to connect online… To be exact Intel She Will Connect program is meant to bridge the technology-gender gap in Africa and expected to reach 5 million women and girls by 2020.
Talking of Lenovo, there is something that has happened drastically over the last few years without many people noticing especially in the Kenyan market and that is the rise of Lenovo as the most preferred PC vendor. If you ask any techie today in Kenya about a good and affordable laptop, most likely they would suggest you go for Lenovo and not HP as it used to be sometime back. But that is not something in Kenya a lone, worldwide Lenovo is now the number in PC business. HP and Dell ruled the PC market for years until 2013 when Lenovo took over as the dominant player. And according to statista.com the overall market leader at the end of 2015 was Lenovo with a market share of 19.8 percent.
PC Market Share courtesy of Statista,com
As you usual, getting a head is easy, the real work is maintaining or remaining as a market leader. I guess the good people at Lenovo know something about that and probably the reason why they are going hard to gain more traction with different groups in Kenya. Women in particular are valuable target but the digital divide is still too high. A fact which is very bad for a country like Kenya but could be good when looking at it from a target market perspective for the likes of Intel and Lenovo.
So what is this Lenovo 2 in 1 one thing? The two in one simply mean, a device that can function as PC and a tablet. If you are reading this, you must have seen such devices around. You can sit down and use it as a Laptop with keyboard and when on the move you can use it as a tablet. Lenovo is pushing the Yoga 2 in 1 device which they describe as elegant and stylish with 360 degrees’ flexibility and perfectly portable.
At the event Lenovo, displayed a number of Yoga device series most of which I will talk about here later. But I must mention briefly their impressive Lenovo Yoga 900. It is their most advanced 2 in 1 Yoga device in the Kenyan market. The Yoga 900 is available with an Intel Core i7-5500U CPU, a 256GB or 512GB SSD, and up to 16GB of DDR3-1600 memory. The device comes with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
Meanwhile there were many other things that were discussed at the event, with most important one being the use of technology and online security. Technology being an enabler for many things and industries including the actual work people do, it is important that we as country we need to ensure that everyone has access to it. As for women who are already using technology, the main issue is how to use it to enable them achieve work life balance.
Work-life balance is tricky for mums. Technology is an enabler 4 paying bills online, buying groceries etc #LenovoIntelCafe #SheWillConnect
— Wanjiru Kihusa (@wanjirukihusa) May 21, 2016
But for those who are yet to be connected, Intel in particular is doing good job in trying to train as many women as possible but it would be great if the Government speed up some of the projects like NOFBI, aimed at solving the last mile connection issue. Also as we mentioned the other time here, it is interesting that after pushing the likes of Safaricom to contribute to the Universal Access Fund , the money has not been used at all.
On Online security, the main concern is always the dark side of the web. Benson Kinoti, Intel Education Project Manager East and Southern Africa on his presentation listed the following as some of the dangers on the dark side of the web especially for the kids
- Pedophiles,
- Identity theft,
- Pornography,
- Gambling
- Cyber Bullying
- Computer and internet addiction,
- Virus,
- Malwares and
- Trojan horse.
There are no clear cut solutions to some of the problems above but one things was clear, understand what your kids are doing online and talk to them about the dangers they might face while online.
