{"id":72478,"date":"2014-11-05T10:56:41","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T08:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=72478"},"modified":"2014-11-05T10:58:28","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T08:58:28","slug":"mtn-unveils-steppa-2-steppa-tablet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/72478\/mtn-unveils-steppa-2-steppa-tablet\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN unveils Steppa 2, Steppa Tablet"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN has revealed the Steppa 2, the successor to its popular and affordable branded Android smartphone which it launched at the start of 2014.<\/p>\n

Speaking to journalists at a press event in Johannesburg on Wednesday, 5 November 2014, MTN said that it is keeping pricing information for the Steppa 2 under wraps for \u201ccompetitive reasons\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Steppa 2 is expected to launch in the last week of November, MTN said.<\/p>\n

Alongside the Steppa 2 announcement, MTN also unveiled plans to launch an affordable Android tablet, which it calls the MTN Steppa Tablet, for R999 during the last week of November 2014.<\/p>\n

The pre-paid offer will include 200MB of data per month for 12 months.<\/p>\n

Contract options are being considered, MTN said, and any other deals will be announced closer to the launch.<\/p>\n

\"MTN<\/a>

MTN Steppa Tablet<\/p><\/div>\n

Affordable smart devices<\/h3>\n

MTN announced the original MTN Steppa towards the end of 2013, saying that it wanted to shake up the South African smartphone market. It launched in early 2014.<\/p>\n

Based on Qualcomm Reference Designs, MTN said that the Steppa was not an ultra-low-cost device, but rather \u201cthe most affordable high-performance smartphone ever\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mike Fairon, MTN South Africa\u2019s head of products and solutions, said that the MTN Steppa was the second best-selling smartphone in South Africa during April 2014.<\/p>\n

More than 80% of the subscribers who bought the Steppa had never owned a 3G-capable device before, and MTN saw a 3-fold average increase in data consumption among these users.<\/p>\n

Tablets offer a different kind of value proposition, such as education and productivity applications as well as media consumption, Fairon said.<\/p>\n

For this reason, and due to the success of the Steppa, MTN wanted to offer a tablet which lower-income earners in South Africa could afford, Fairon said.<\/p>\n

Steppa specs<\/h3>\n

The MTN Steppa 2 features a 4\u201c WVGA display, is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor, and runs on Android 4.3 \u201dJelly Bean\u201d.<\/p>\n

Pre-empting questions about why the Steppa 2 doesn\u2019t run on Android 4.4, Qualcomm\u2019s Dominique Friedl told journalists at the press event that it takes some time to put a device together.<\/p>\n

However, he promised that the Steppa 2 would be upgradable to Android 4.4 KitKat.<\/p>\n

The Steppa Tablet, however, will run on Android 4.4, using the same 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 chipset.<\/p>\n

The tablet will have a 7″ WSVGA (1024×600) display, with a 2MP rear camera and 4GB of internal storage (microSD expandable).<\/p>\n

More on MTN<\/h3>\n

MTN Joburg street light antennas on hold<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN deploys street pole cell towers<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN regains footing in SA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN launches reverse charge service<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN has revealed the Steppa Tablet and Steppa 2, the successor to its popular and affordable branded Android smartphone which it launched at the start of 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":72480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,28,9088,9090],"class_list":["post-72478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-mtn-steppa-2","tag-mtn-steppa-tablet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72478"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72490,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72478\/revisions\/72490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}