How do you see the digital signage market developing in 2008?

Generally the market has continued to develop more or less as we anticipated a year and a half or two years ago. That is to say that there hasn’t been any dramatic explosion of sales where all the companies involved suddenly grow into huge entities. Rather there has been a lot of trialling and experimentation as the market finds its feet. One of the things that has continued which I don’t see as a positive is that some markets are extremely competitive. We have been aware for some time that the barriers for entry into the market, where people could say that they were offering digital signage solutions were quite low whereas the barriers to true expertise are comparatively high.
The problem is that the  customers are often unaware as to who really has the expertise and, due to the competitiveness of the market, you will often find several companies chasing the same deal, which can be very confusing for clients.

This year we’ve seen Cisco enterting the market and they clearly have big ambitions. What do you think about their move?

I think it was fairly obvious for a while that Cisco and companies of that size would be entering the signage market. The sector does require a big infrastructure element so from that point of view it was unsurprising that they made their move. We were aware for some time that companies were trying to sell digital signage to Cisco’s clients and this no doubt attracted the attention of the company’s management.

New growth areas are something that seems to have been on the back burner for a while, but with the arrival of ad-supported signage networks and ever more sophisticated means of gauging customer impact, how big do you think digital signage could become?

To answer that we have to consider how retail might develop over the next few years. Increasingly in town centres we are seeing single-brand retailers, when I travel I see that major cities all around Europe are increasingly dominated by this sort of outlet and so the question becomes – ‘where do ad-supported networks fit in to all this ?’ One immediately thinks of department stores, major supermarkets and superstores such as B&Q DIY outlets. Ad-support is definitely going to be a dynamic growth area but I also think that we’ll see a hybrid model where funding is mixed, with costs underpinned by one source and augmented by ad-support. This provides an extra element of security and is the most solid emerging business model.