Sony has a long and glorious background in the display industry, and professional displays have become an important part of Sony's BtoB strategy. Can you tell us a little bit about the background to the business in general and how Sony has evolved with the market?

It’s of course a little more than just displays… this is the Sony broadcast and professional company.
Apart from broadcasting and displays being a main part of our business, we see a lot of opportunities in two new businesses… what we call “Retail, Transport and Venues”, which is my business, and the other one is Health-Care. Both these fields are growing very quickly within Sony’s professional area. Retail, Transport and Venues is basically “out of home” applications - the main one being digital signage, or what’s better termed “out of home messaging”, and we also do a lot of IP (remote) monitoring.

Within the general market for professional displays, digital signage is taking on ever increasing importance. How do you see this market progressing in the next few years and what will be the main driving forces?

It’s explosive! It’s growing very fast, but also growing away from screen features. Those are all okay now and the prices are all coming together. The main driver as far as I see it will be the acceptance of out of home messaging by the advertising community – the media planners and buyers… and the other main driver will be for the retailers, cinemas and so-on to establish a solid business model around it. These are the two drivers that will further accelerate development.

So evidently, Sony has understood that people want solutions, not just screens. What is different about what Sony is doing in this respect?

We’re trying to make our clients happy and make revenue out of our knowledge … not just the screen. You’re quite familiar with how tough and competitive the screen market is, and we also know that most of our customers want more than than just a screen at a good price. Whichever way you look at it, digital signage is like installing a mini TV station in your shop or shopping mall or branches. You need to have someone who understands formats like MPEG and Flash. Who can create a play-list, make sure it all works, and if it doesn’t work at a remote location, ensure you get warnings... especially if you sell space. All these issues are very well understood from the television industry and they are also applicable to signage – just on a different scale. It’s the type of thing we know very well, and we try to be different from those competitors who only build screens or sell software.

How important is the fact that Sony "covers all bases", from production right up to narrowcasting?

It’s vital. It’s quite a unique selling proposition. We don’t touch the creative part of it – the creation of clips – although we know which ones work and which ones don’t. But being able to capture high definition images and equip a studio on top of the digital signage network is important. It’s something like we did for Arsenal Emirates football stadium for example, where they have a big digital signage network in the stadium, but there’s also a high definition television studio for the capture of images, also done by us. We describe it as “Sony United” when you put it all together! We offer a lot of added value to the customer. 

We have often been told that simplicity is of great importance in the successful running of a digital signage project. How does Sony simplify the process?

By being a one-stop shop. Just ring us and we’ll install the network for you with all the components, and at the end of the installation you receive the keyboards to run it, or we’ll even run it for you… you only need to give us the creative materials and we’ll turn it into something that works for the customer. Simplicity comes in being a one-stop shop. I don’t think simplicity comes in the individual components because if you look at signage, it’s still quite a complex kind of network.
Software looks quite simple when you work with it, but the software bit you don’t see is the whole monitoring and control piece and that is quite complex. It needs to be, but the customer doesn’t have to see that… but it is quite vital.

So what kinds of companies should use digital signage to add value to their communication?

Hotel reception applications or hospitality, corporate reception areas, internal communications, where companies want to put out messages on different floors, or smaller retail outlets, with not a lot of differences between the outlets … it’s entry level digital signage, circumventing the limitations of using a simple DVD player.

Does Sony have a specific contact for people interested in your solutions?

Yes: me! Not personally all the time (!)… but there is a special sales force inside Sony in all countries across Europe, speaking the language and understanding the specific issues of each area. People interested in our solutions are free to contact me, and I can put them in contact with their local representative.