Article

CeBIT: Digital signage and kiosks in the (wide) ITC world

CeBIT 2010 Part II: The European digital IT and telecommunications show revealed several trends for kiosks and digital signage.

March 15, 2010 by Marco Ruocco — Consultant, MRU

HANOVER, Germany — The early-March CeBIT 2010 was a global meeting place for the world ITC community, attracting development, production and research firms and organizations from all the industrial regions of the world.

CeBIT was held in a 27-hall, 1-square-kilometer exhibition facility where essentially all sectors of information technology had at least some representation both in terms of exhibition surface and presence of top management at the booths. It was organized by broad IT-related themes (business IT, consumer electronics, Internet, etc.) so that digital signage and kiosk exhibitors were distributed in multiple halls. For exhibitors this also meant a different approach from specialized tradeshows. The absence of many major digital signage and kiosk industry players turned out to be an opportunity for smaller, mainly European firms that could showcase their products to a much wider, more diversely involved public without pressure from competitors.

Most importantly, at CeBIT2010 the entire chain of the digital signage-related industry was present, from U.S. chip makers to Asian hardware OEMs, from small- and medium-scale system integrators to major digital display producers and international research facilities addressing digital signage with innovative applications. For digital signage professionals there was the opportunity to tap into this wider perspective on the market and directly find the needed technology, infrastructure, distribution contact or research idea in person and in the correct IT perspective.HANOVER, Germany — The early-March CeBIT 2010 was a global meeting place for the world ITC community, attracting development, production and research firms and organizations from all the industrial regions of the world.

CeBIT was held in a 27-hall, 1-square-kilometer exhibition facility where essentially all sectors of information technology had at least some representation both in terms of exhibition surface and presence of top management at the booths. It was organized by broad IT-related themes (business IT, consumer electronics, Internet, etc.) so that digital signage and kiosk exhibitors were distributed in multiple halls. For exhibitors this also meant a different approach from specialized tradeshows. The absence of many major digital signage and kiosk industry players turned out to be an opportunity for smaller, mainly European firms that could showcase their products to a much wider, more diversely involved public without pressure from competitors.

US-based Tyco Electronics presented the 42-inch 4200L LCD screen for interactive digital signage based on APR (Acoustic Pulse Recognition) technology that detected the touch of any object capable of emitting a sound on impact with the LCD surface. France-based Taztag presented a Hyundai-produced kiosk and kiosk-enabling technology (a custom add-on board and a portable device) for supporting NFC (Near Field Communication) interaction in a variety of application scenarios. On the stereo 3D front, German Visumotion presented 3D autostereoscopic screens for digital signage combined with a software solution for handling programmed 3D data playback. Research by German research Fraunhofer Institute resulted in the concept model Free2C_smart, an autostereoscopic 3D kiosk controlled by gesture and with improved picture quality thanks to eye-motion camera detectors. The Browser kiosk, developed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany, combined RFID object recognition in a medication-handling application for elderly people in futuristic home scenarios.

While specialized fairs may offer a more complete product showcase, the general ITC context shows digital signage and kiosks as an area of technological convergence, which could be found at multiple levels in the industry from different players. The picture emerging from CeBIT shows specialization of some OEM hardware producers, a variety of approaches adopted by system integrators, and a growing interest in innovation.

Marco Ruocco is a freelance writer based in Milan, Italy.