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Sharp digital signage 'business as usual' after TV deal, exec says

What does the Hisense acquisition of Sharp's American TV business mean for the company's professional-grade digital signage displays?

August 11, 2015 by Christopher Hall — w, t

Chinese electronics manufacturer Hisense Group and Japanese electronics manufacturer Sharp Corp. recently announced that Hisense will take over Sharp's consumer TV business in North and South America.

According to the announcement, Hisense will be purchasing all equity and assets of Sharp's TV factory in Mexico for $23.7 million, along with rights to use the "Sharp" brand name and all its channel resources in the North and South American regions. This acquisition means Hisense is completely taking over Sharp's TV business in these regions.

Of course, Sharp U.S. subsidiary Sharp Electronics Corp. encompasses two division companies — Sharp Electronics Marketing Corp. (the consumer-grade displays) and Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America (the printers, copiers and professional-grade digital signage displays) — so what does that announcement mean for the digital signage displays from Sharp?

According to Gary Bailer, director of product planning and marketing for the latter, SIICA, the answer's essentially "not much."

"At least as far as our professional commercial display products, it's business as usual … I'm told that the deal with Hisense specifically excludes our B2B professional and commercial display products," Bailer said in a recent phone call. "So for us it's business as usual. It shouldn’t have any impact whatsoever from a development point of view, for future product releases or current products that are on the market."

Asked if there might be some longer-term ramifications for the digital signage side of the business, Bailer said instead that there were some potential silver linings in the news. While the news is unfortunate on a personal and personnel level — inasmuch as it affects the people working on the consumer TV side of the business — on a purely economic level it could also eventually free up financial and engineering resources that in the past had gone to the consumer side but could now be re-directed to the commercial side.

"So that's where I'm looking for a silver lining," Bailer said, "and early indicators are that that's a strong possibility."

In fact, later in the day Bailer forwarded on an internal memo from SIICA President Doug Albregts that echoed those sentiments: "While this is a significant change regarding our consumer TVs, the sales and marketing of Sharp's entire B2B product portfolio, including displays, for business and commercial applications, remains unchanged. In fact, the Professional Displays are specifically not included in this agreement and will remain a key part of our B2B product portfolio," Abregts said in the memo. "While this decision was difficult considering the impact to Sharp employees as well as Sharp Corp., we are confident that this will help drive additional focus to our B2B business efforts here in the United States."

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