The SCREENS.tv Blog

We're at the beginning of an exciting new curve... (4)

 

This year's Screen Expo - the third in an annual series - was a rip-roaring success for most exhibitors and, judging from the technology on show, it's clear that digital signage still has some way to go before the serious profits that some vendors are making will start to disappear.

Chatting with my fellow SCREENS.tv writer Gareth Powell - the ex-computer editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and who knows the Asian marketplace like the back of his hand - he agrees with my observations at the show that the digital signage market is broadly at the same stage as computers were in the late 1980s.

Unlike the computers of that era, however, it's not the hardware that is driving things forward, but the software and, of course, the content.

I was particularly taken with the `swirling water' effect on the floor projections at the Screen Expo show entrance when I visited yesterday.

More than anything, this shows what good signage is really capable of in terms of eyeball-catching effects.

Other innovations include the successful marriage of signage and mobile phones, which several vendors at the show were showing off.

As illustrated by the stunning trial of this technology at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago last Friday (see story here) it's clear that interaction will be the order of the day with future successful signage applications.

And it's technology marriages like this that are driving Netpresenter's highly innovative low-cost entry-level signage software (see story here), which runs on a basic Windows-driven PC.

Netpresenter's software allows smaller firms to get to grips with signage without breaking the bank and, equally importantly, the content updates - once the graphics and/or screen images are stripped out of the equation - are around 12 to 15 kilobytes small.

As Netpresenter's UK managing director Steve Osborn told me the other day, this is important as many smaller companies are running their signage distribution networks across the same infrastructure as their tills, so the last thing they want is for the tills to freeze when a time-of-day update to the screens is in progress!

Chatting with exhibitors at the show yesterday, however, suggests that other entry-level signage applications are also on their way, which can only do a lot of good if it encourages smaller companies to test signage systems for the first time.

Netpresenter's Osborn sees his £695 entry-level application as having great potential, as the smaller companies will often move up the market once they realise the serious marketing potential that signage offers them.

According to Osborn, these entry-level customers will also start looking monthly package plans from Netpresenter, assuring the company with a regular income stream - which is positive in cashflow terms for the customer company, as well as the vendor.

It will be interesting to see, in the months ahead, what new entry-level products and services other vendors start to launch. Judging from the innovative companies showing off their products and services at the show in London this week, the industry won't have long to wait....

Share this article with others

Post to del.icio.us