Article

Top deployments at Europe expo

Seven kiosks made the show's SuperStar Deployments list.

November 12, 2007

Bill Yackey is managing editor of Digital Signage Today and a regular contributor to Self Service World.

Click here to view a slideshow from the expo.

From the time the doors opened at KioskCom Europe's Self-Service Expo in London's Olympia Convention Center, the show floor was steadily paced by kiosk vendors, deployers and exhibitors from the 82 companies that brought their latest products to the show.

KioskCom Europe, now in its second year, was deemed a great success, said Phil Hunter, event director.

"Attendance is up 30% this year, which is a great indication for the future," Hunter said. "That's exactly what we wanted to do."

The success of the show was echoed from many of the show's exhibitors, including Bob Ventresca, marketing director of kiosk and digital signage software provider Netkey.

"This show has really been good so far for us," he said. "We're seeing a lot of unique digital signage applications."

The main focus of the show seemed to be the SuperStar Deployments feature area, which focused on the top kiosk deployments of the past year. The seven selections were made by the show organizers based on a survey of the top self-service deployments published in the August issue of Self-Service World magazine.

The SuperStar Deployments, a chosen by KioskCom Europe:

Representatives from Fujifilm, Coinstar and Wincor Nixdorf discuss self-service in the SuperStar Deployments booth.

The left corner of the feature area housed NCR's EasyPoint 42 kiosk, which has seen more than 50,000 deployments at large retail stores such as Wal-Mart, Sears and Macy's.

Though it has gone through several evolutions, the kiosk has been in production since 1999 and is mainly used for in-store point-of-decision applications. The kiosk at the show had software designed to help a buyer pair wines with food.

"The EasyPoint touchscreen is resistive touch technology, whereas we see our competitors using optical technology," said Bill Thompson, channel and partner manager for NCR in London.

Perhaps one of the first point-of-sale kiosks, the Wincor Nixdorf Beetle was on display with several Wincor reps on hand to discuss the unit, now in its fifth generation. There are over one million Beetle kiosks deployed, with most locations in Europe and Asia.

Although the Beetle POS System was the official SuperStar deployment for the company, product sales executive Chris Chappill and others mainly showed Wincor's pay terminal, which accepts payments using a receipt after customers have gone through the self-checkout process. Chappill said the unit is designed to cut down on wait times at self-checkouts.

One of the most widely deployed kiosks of all time, the Kodak Picture Maker found its spot in the SuperStar Deployments feature area. The Picture Maker has been in production since 1993, and now has seen more than 85,000 deployments. Picture Makers are generally customized to fit the location they are deployed in, be it large retailers, craft stores or specialty photo stores.

At the show, attendees were invited to manipulate and edit pictures, and even print enlargements to demonstrate the wide range of capabilities of the Picture Maker.

As part of the SuperStar deployments booth, Coinstar demonstrated its Coins to Cash kiosk, which allows users to change in coinage for cash.

Another large grocery staple has been the Coinstar Coins to Cash kiosk, which earned an invitation to the SuperStar Deployments area with 13,000 locations and a solid track record dating back to 1992. Coins to cash kiosks have also expanded out from grocery stores and are now deployed in supermarkets, drug stores, large retailers, banks, convenience stores and restaurants, counting more than $13 billion in change.

Coinstar has deployed more than 800 kiosks in the U.K. alone. The machines are typically green in the US, while the unit at the show, and others in the U.K., are blue.

FujiFilm showed a version of its GetPix photo kiosk in the feature area, equipped with a 15-inch touchscreen and scanner.

"These kiosks are modular, so the peripherals can be different for each customer," said Paul Austin, marketing coordinator for FujiFilm UK. "The GetPix is flexible to fit in with people's businesses rather than asking businesses to cater to the machine."

Austin said that online photo editing software and scrapbooking have been the latest trends in the photo kiosk industry. Fuji's GetPix software (known as SmartPix in the U.S.) supports both of those applications, Austin said.

In addition to a booth featuring its line of interactive kiosks, Protouch provided a Thru-Glass Interactive Shop Window for the SuperStar Deployments feature area. The window comprises a touch-sensitive film that is placed on the inside of the window. A projector then puts interactive content on the window, providing what Protouch sales executive Alex Dukes calls projective capacitive technology.

"By touching the window, you're pushing a microwave through the glass, essentially breaking a bubble with your finger. The window registers that," Dukes said. In addition to retail store applications, the window has also been used by real estate agents, travel agents and restaurants.

Representing the growing DVD kiosk market, the Coinstar DVD kiosk found its place near the entrance of the SuperStar Deployments feature area. Coinstar's kiosk was branded for DVDExpress, and the functionality was much like the redbox or DVD Play kiosks seen in the United States. Customers use a 17-inch touchscreen to browse through new release titles, which generally number more than 100. Users have the option of monthly All-You-Can-Watch program and can purchase the movie if so desired. The kiosk uses RFID sensors on the discs to manage inventory inside the machine.

Here are some of the other companies who made the news at the show:

Arcatech Manufacturing Europe showcased its line of cash dispensers from Fujitsu, which Rudi Ryshway, managing director, said are becoming more popular as more transactional kiosks now offer change.

"Customers use credit cards, but many still want to pay in cash," Ryshway said. "So we need to be able to give change."

KioskCom Europe was the debut for ELO Touchsystems' Mega Kiosk range of touchscreens. On display at the show was a 26-inch model with a watertight bezel. The unit featured ELO's Acoustic Pulse Recognition, which registers noise pulses from a finger's impact on the screen.

"It's listening rather than feeling," said Paul Grigg, key account manager for ELO. "Also, since the screen is just glass, it can't be worn down."

GWD Media, casually known as Geeks Who Deliver, had its booth decked out like a geek's bedroom. In the abode: an early 80's computer, 37-inch flatscreen and GWD's telemetry devices for remote management.

GWD's devices are embedded in kiosks and vending machines to provide auditable information about the units, such as amounts of cash or stock. GWD CEO James Oladujoye said the remote monitoring service in the U.K. runs about â‚¤100 per year.

The Hilton Kiosk from Key Technologies is strictly informational and deployed in hotel lobbies.

At the corner of Key Technology's booth was a 4-panel informational kiosk with a touchscreen panel on each faÃ§ade and lightboxes for additional advertising above each screen. Dermot Butler, commercial director for Key, said Infobox Interactive has placed the kiosk in shopping centers around the U.K.

In the other corner of the booth, a blue hue shone through the clear plastic enclosure of Key's Hilton Kiosk, an informational unit deployed in hotel lobbies. "We're going for the wow factor here," Butler said.

KIOSK Information Systems showed the ZOOX Stations Mulitplayer Online Gaming kiosk, which won an Excellence Award at the Self Service Expo in the spring. The MPOG kiosk has seen deployments in airports and military bases in the past year.

KIOSK and Provisio, software designers of SiteKiosk 6, were in a partner booth with Working Solutions and Amatica, as well as Felix Groupof England. Felix had its MAX BOX kiosk on display, which is a multi-function unit that can be customized to include media downloads, mobile phone top-ups, picture printing and more. The MAX BOX is only deployed in the U.K. for now, but Worthington said the kiosk will see deployments in the US in the coming months.

"We mostly see the kiosk in cinemas and convenient stores for mobile top-ups and pre-paid cards," said Sallie Worthington, product manager for Felix. "The picture printing is especially popular in airports, for people wanting to immediately get pictures from their holidays."

Kioware representatives Stephanie Kropkowski and Christina Hamberger were on hand to discuss Kioware's new Enterprise Server, a suite of enterprise-level modules such as content management, payment processing, shopping carts and order processing that are used to secure kiosk software. Kropkowski said the suite has been used for ticketing, concierge, self-checkout and POS applications.

British company Felix Group was in a partner booth with KIOSK and Provisio SiteKiosk, where the company displayed the numerous features of the MAX BOX kiosk.

St. Clair Interactive featured a gift card kiosk that printed custom themes, amounts, and to/from information on both the back and front of the gift cards. The total process took about 50 seconds.

"This eliminates the huge racks of gift cards you see available in stores and sales associate involvement in the sale of gift cards," said Chris Peter, project manager for St. Clair Interactive.

Annette Tarlon, marketing director for STAR Micronics, said that 50 percent of customers now want package printers for their kiosks, mainly because of easy maintenance and installation, and also plug and play convenience. The company used that platform to launch the TSP100 Future PRNT at the show. The direct thermal printer is designed to print logos on the receipts, and Tarlton said all graphics for those files are held as .xml files on PCs for easy use.

Elsewhere in London, the popular department store Harrod's had recently put 950 TSP100 FuturePRNTs to use.

Garnering attention from both digital signage and sports car gearheads, U Touchfeatured a back to back 50-inch interactive digital signage display, which ran content designed for a Porsche dealership. The lower half of the screen was touch-enabled and controlled Porsche video clips, which ran on the top half of the screen.

U Touch also featured one of its ruggedized touch-enabling overlays on a 46-inch Sanyo screen. The overlay is waterproof and designed to turn any flatscreen into a touchscreen using infared technology.

"We think infrared is the best touch technology," said Liam Slattery of U Touch.

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