Japanese Insurance Co. Announces One of Year's Largest Windows-Based Tablet Deployments

By Brittany Walters-Bearden
TMCnet Contributor

Apple (News - Alert) has been a popular consumer and business tablet, being used by company’s including American Airlines, Barclays Bank and British Airways. Now, Windows-based tablets are garnering their own market share amongst businesses. Most recently, they got a major boost from Japan’s Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance, which has announced that it is set to deploy 30,000 Windows 8-equipped tablets to its sales force.

Insurance & Technology’s senior editor, Nathan Golia, reports that the Fujistu-brand tablets will begin being used in September. A recent statement from Microsoft (News - Alert) notes that this is “Japan’s largest and one of the world’s largest deployments of Windows 8 tablets this year.” The statement added that the insurance company will be utilizing the tablets to explain its products through video and other content, as well as enhancing security, streamlining the processing of contracts, and helping to reduce the need for printed documentation.

Microsoft’s blog notes that the insurance company will be utilizing custom-made tablets, which will address their unique needs as a company. Some of the features of the tablet include app compatibility—including compatibly with their life insurance proposal app—and multi-touch with stylus data input, which, the blog says, is “key for moving their entire customer base from a familiar paper-based model to digital.”

In a June article for Inc., John Brandon noted that the Windows Surface RT tablet was “still not ready for the office.” While the Surface itself may not be ready, Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance’s decision to deploy Windows-based Fujitsu (News - Alert) tablets may inspire other companies to do the same.

In other Windows-related news, a pre-release version of the free update, Windows 8.1 Enterprise, is currently available, including a preview, overview of what is new, FAQs for IT professionals, and a forum for IT professionals. Of their various updates, companies will be most excited to hear that there are Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) enhancements and security enhancements.