It was interesting to hear that Panasonic [1] is shifting its focus in the digital signage space to expand more on the business-to-business sector and less on the consumer.
[2]Karl DeManss
Karl DeManss, business development manager, commercial display solutions at Panasonic, told me at #dse2013 that the consumer sector takes about 40% of the digital signage business.
He expects that to be reduced by half, as Panasonic Solutions focuses more and more on the needs of B2B clients.
Under CEO Kazuhiro Tsuga, the public company, headquartered in Japan, deals with 13 different vertical markets: Food Services; Government; Healthcare; Hospitality; House of Worship; Oil and Gas; Public Safety; Retail; SMB; Supply Chain Management; Sports & Entertainment; Telecom; Utilities; and Video Production.
One of the things DeManss mentioned is the company’s interest in security products and in monitoring.
“We can provide anonymous analytics,” he said.
The company is an Intel partner, and has alliances, so that one call is all clients need, no matter what their needs, said DeManss. At the moment, in the U.S. alone, Panasonic has 5,400 screens in 1,100 locations. It also has installations in such diverse locations as Singapore, Guyana, Malasia and the Ukraine.
At DSE, Panasonic launched two new products: Panasonic LFV50 LED Video Wall Display and Panasonic SOLID Shine Series.
The 55” videowall display is Panasonic’s first LED display featuring an ultra-narrow bezel built for a near seamless video wall installation. The delivers stunning picture quality with 800 cd/m2 brightness, even in well-lit areas, making it ideal for a multitude of digital signage, public information and command and control applications. Content can be displayed on the individual screens or shown across multiple displays. When mounted bezel-to-bezel, the displays’ screen-to-screen distance measures only 5.3 mm. It will ship in the fall.
Panasonic’s Solid Shine Series projectors feature a LED/Laser light source that will deliver up to 20,000 hours of virtually maintenance-free operation. The model delivers 3,500 lumens of brightness and 1080p resolution. It offers a 20,000:1 contrast ratio and features that make the device ideal for digital signage applications, including Portrait Mode projection capability, as well as Edge Blending, Color Matching and 3D projection. The combination of DIGITAL LINK with this lamp-free lighting technology should significantly reduce end user installation and maintenance costs.