Montblanc Hope Second Time is the Charm with Digital Paper.

 Readers of the luxury consumer press might have come across glowing and effusive praise for Montblanc's exciting new Digital Paper.  The new device is effectively a writing tablet, Wirth accompanying Montblanc Meisterstuck pen,

The marketing material suggests this is Montblanc's first foray into the digital writing space, and that it represents a remarkable new direction for the storied firm.  This is extremely odd.  As the brands own website still stocks and sells "Augmented Paper", their first attempt to break into the digital writing space. Available at this link at time of writing.

The older Augmented Paper, which has existed for over 10 years, is a conventional piece of paper, with special pen, and sensors, that turns writing into digital text via the sensors and a program.  Granted, this is clearly quite different from a tablet one writes on, but it is still profoundly odd that they wax lyrical on the new tablet, giving the impression throughout that they never dipped their toe into technology before.

We like making suggestions and predictions here, and would love to again.  Yet a pen company releasing a new digital product suggesting it's their first, while an existing digital product exists in their range really doesn't make much sense.  Even less so when in consideration of the fact the older product never sold well.

The sensible choice would have been to quietly discontinue the unpopular Augmented Paper, and release the Digital Paper to much fanfare.  But they didn't, so let's look on the bright side, you as a consumer have choice!  You can go for the Augmented Paper, pad with pen, for around £1,000, or the new Digital Paper tablet for £750, plus Digital Pen for £230.  Enjoy.