opinion
A growing industry
The success of the dynamic ISE event
in February 2017 reflects the success
of the industry it serves
Jeff Hastings, CEO, BrightSign – www.brightsign.biz
Digital signage adoption is increasing
almost everywhere. Surveys such as the
authoritative IHS Global Market for Digital
Signage report forecast that shipments
of displays and players into the signage
market will grow by 9.3% and 8.1%
respectively in 2017.
Each vertical we serve is seeing
growth at this time. Retail – the big market
for signage – is far from saturated. For
example, Technavio is forecasting a 16%
growth in retail display sales. There are
still retailers adopting signage for the first
time, while existing users are introducing
screens to further stores, increasing
the number of screens in locations
that already have them, replacing PC’s,
screens and infrastructure as technology
improves. Corporate, leisure, education,
food service and transport are also all
growing markets.
As demand continues to grow,
dedicated appliances designed specifically
for the task are coming to dominate the
market. Integrators like purpose-built
players are doing so for three basic
38 KIOSK solutions
reasons: scalability, stability and content
management. A specific model of an
appliance player is identical no matter
where in the world it’s installed – so if an
application works in the integrators lab, it
will work anywhere.
The hardware and firmware design
is stable – new releases of firmware
are normally only to implement new
features, and are optional. If you don’t
need the new feature you don’t need
to upgrade. Finally, appliance players
are closely integrated with the leading
content management systems, making
it easy to manage national, regional or
global player networks. Integrators also
love the signature reliability of dedicated
players – with a proprietary operating
system designed specifically for one
purpose around one specific hardware
architecture – there is nothing to fail.
Appliance player design is evolving,
to make them easier to integrate into the
display. Until now the players built into
screens have been relatively limited in
their capabilities and software support.
ISE saw the launch of digital signage
players that can be readily embedded
into a display, and offer the features and
software integration of industry leading
player families. The launch of new OPS
players gives the two million OPS displays
worldwide access to an affordable,
reliable media player that offers features
and functionality that have come to be
expected from commercial digital signage.
I’m excited about the prospects for
the digital signage industry. We're in the
business of entertaining and informing
people, and we're continually finding
new and more exciting ways of providing
an experience with digital signage. As
I walk around events like ISE, DSE, and
InfoComm, I continue to see innovations
that take my breath away. As long as
we can maintain this, then our present
growth trajectory will continue and
perhaps even accelerate further. n