Commentary

Digital signage adoption continues to surge forward

Recent digital signage trade shows reflect the breakneck pace of innovation in the digital signage industry. Digital signage adoption is increasing almost everywhere.

May 30, 2017 by Jeff Hastings — CEO, BrightSign

To say that the success of ISE in February 2017 reflects the success of the industry it serves doesn't diminish the achievement of the organizers in running such a dynamic event.

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 percent and 8.1 percent respectively in 2017.

Each vertical that 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 percent growth in retail display sales. There are still retailers adopting signage for the first time, while existing users are introducing screens to additional stores, increasing the number of screens in locations that already have them, and replacing PCs, 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 for three basic reasons: scalability, stability and content management. A specific model of an appliance player is identical no matter where in the world it is 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. Now, some digital signage modules make it easy for manufacturers to embed market-leading digital signage technology directly into their displays. 

I am excited about the prospects for the digital signage industry. We are in the business of entertaining and informing people, and we are 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 that, then our present growth trajectory will continue and perhaps even accelerate further.  

Image via Istock.com

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BrightSign is the global market leader in digital signage media players, offering the most reliable, secure and sophisticated solid-state media players on the market today.

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