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But is it a kiosk?

There seems to be a never-ending stream of self-service applications including shelf-edge information displays, price-checker, payment terminals with signature capture, shopping assistants, gift registries, and more. But are they kiosks?

June 9, 2004

It would be hard to walk around a tradeshow that had a kiosk or retail focus and not see a wide variety of self-contained computing devices that at a minimum have a powerful CPU, monitor and touchscreen housed together in what usually is a neat molded plastic enclosure.

There seems to be a never-ending stream of possible applications. Shelf-edge information displays, price-checker, payment terminals with signature capture, shopping assistants, gift registries, and many more. Because of the number of applications and the potential for huge deployment numbers, the market has attracted some of the larger players, like IBM, Symbol, and Hand Held Products to name a few.

Just to give you an idea of the scope of the opportunity, a large retailer like Wal-Mart could easily deploy 15 price checkers per store. A little quick math and you're talking about 50,000 units or more in a single roll-out.

Similar systems, albeit much simpler units, have been in place in Target and Toys "R" Us for many years performing price checks. Those models have a single line or very simple display that gives very little product information, other than price. It's hard to call them a kiosk.

The new offerings display much more in-depth product information utilizing powerful computers and Widows Software, have a touch screen for interface, and when they are not in use, provide advertising or educational information. Now that does sound like a kiosk.

The scope of these minis's goes far beyond price-checkers. CueSol has been deploying "mini kiosks" as shopping assistants, mounted directly in the cart handle at Stop & Shop stores. The hardware was provided by Symbol in the past, but CueSol is transitioning to IBM hardware. The "Shopping Buddy" performs a variety of functions including providing special offers and coupons (even as you move about the store, special offers are fed to the machine related to the aisle you are negotiating), store directories, remote deli ordering, and an interesting way to pay for your items-scan and bag them as you pick them off the shelf.

The system will even download a shopping list you fill out on the Web. A map shows where the items are located, and as you collect, the items disappear from the map as well as the list-almost as though you are a human Pac Man. A recent article in Today's Dietitian expounds the advantages of Shopping Buddy for nutrition education, goal setting, nutrition label information, recipes and so on. The article goes so far as to say there may be career opportunities for nutritionists based on the new technology. (Today's Dietician, Vol. 6, No. 5, May 2004).

So the question is, "Is it a Kiosk?" I spoke with a couple of seasoned pros and got mixed reactions. Craig Keefner at KIS believes the devices are irrelevant to the kiosk industry and said, "It's like calling Symbol hand-scanners kiosks because customers at Target use them. You are confusing stand-alone self-service devices with self-service kiosks."

Maybe so, but if you deploy a traditional kiosk store directory, and there is a device doing the same thing but with technology in a different size package, I'm not so certain. Craig also said, "They are in the same `maybe we can use these' device class that tablets (tablet computers) are in."

Frank Olea at Olea Exhibits, however, believes the mini is a kiosk, although with limited display size and capabilities. He said, "I don't feel threatened by the minis; in fact I think they could enhance our business. There will always be a need for printing stations and full featured kiosks".

The minis certainly are limiting compared to a full-featured kiosk. Hand Held Products Transaction Team 8870, which they refer to as the Image Kiosk, has a screen size of just 4.45 x 3.3 inches, and there is no printer or ability to accept cash. But it is capable: Although its overall size is just 9.75 x 8.6 inches and 3.8 inches thick, it can read a mag stripe card, scan a barcode, capture a signature and run Windows 2000 or Windows NT 3.5 or higher.

The IBM personal shopping assistant and the Micro Industries Touch & Go Paige are both also very small units by traditional kiosk standards but deploy a larger 10.4-inch screen and use Intel Pentium M technology. Symbol's CAT (Customer Access Terminal) is a smaller screen unit with integrated scanning capabilities, and was shown at Retail Systems with a fingerprint-recognition peripheral.

The mini kiosk opportunity for traditional kiosk enclosure manufacturers is probably somewhat limited. It takes a fairly large investment to develop the expertise to integrate the single-board computers, learn about monitors at the component level, and design and tool the molded plastic enclosures.

This is a big leap if you're in the particleboard or sheet metal enclosure business and probably explains why these devices are coming from companies that are somewhat outside our current KOA membership. For programmers, however, there is probably a large opportunity to be involved in deployments of large numbers of units if you are willing to make the investment to learn the idiosyncrasies of these devices.

Before making the jump, however, you might want to consider some of our recent history. As Craig said, tablet computers seem to have fizzled, and I am unaware of any successful rollouts in kiosks. Also, a very innovative company named InTouch, and its visionary leader Josh Kaplan, developed a mini kiosk in the mid '90s.

It certainly seemed like a great idea at the time, and many traditional kiosk manufacturers were threatened. The same was true with NCR when they announced the 7401 kiosk. The InTouch kiosk, although very innovative, was not a commercial success. NCR on the other hand has deployed more than 40,000 units, and the product continues to be manufactured.

Another interesting comparison would be CD i kiosks, which were pioneered by Panasonic, who made a big investment in CD i in the '90s. The kiosks were not computer-based, but video based (NTSC) with some computing capabilities including touch interface. The system allowed for information dissemination although not collection.

Many jumped on the bandwagon as this was a significantly cheaper alternative to video overlay on your 386 computers. It seemed like all the companies that invested in the equipment and programming knowledge then spent considerable time trying to add capabilities to make the system work like a kiosk. At some point, and as computer capabilities improved, the systems no longer made sense.

So are the mini kiosks a kiosk? Whatever we decide to call them, I think they will present interesting opportunities for many of the KOA members.