Demand For Digital Displays Acclerates, Spurring Growth In Synnex’s VisualSolv Business

Synnex is expecting 20 percent to 30 percent growth in its VisualSolv business this year, on top of 40 percent growth last year. Tht growth is being driven by demand for digital displays and signage that run across nearly every vertical, said Sandi Stambaugh, the company’s vice president of product management.

“Anywhere there’s a high touchpoint for consumers, the demand for experience is growing. That’s really what it comes down to,” she said. “Restaurants, hospitality, we’re seeing significant opportunities in all those [and in] corporate, retail, transportation, hospitals and bigger health-care facilities, as well as even some doctor’s offices.”

Consumers now expect to see digital displays when they enter a building and they associate that with an organization being more modern and technologically advanced, Stambaugh said.

“That experience that I was talking about earlier is so critical,” she said. “Consumers are just expecting it. We expect it when we go to the hospital. Hospitals that are newer and cooler and technologically advanced from an experience perspective feel like all of a sudden the doctors are going to be better, right? We see that in schools. When we see schools that seem to be embracing technology, you know parents want their kids there because they’re going to get that edge.”

From a product perspective, the market is predicted to grow to $230 billion by 2023, Stambaugh said, with digital signage alone moving at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate and the video wall market predicted to reach $4 billion by 2022. The growth is not just with AV integrators, she said, but is across the board, including government business with a refresh of control rooms and expansion of training facilities. In the corporate space, the nation’s approximately 45 million meeting spaces are all potential targets, she said.

“The collaboration space is definitely an area where we see a significant opportunity for growth,” she said. “And I think there’s enough confusion right now that it makes a lot of sense for Synnex to step in and help. I think that’s why the subscription-based offering makes a lot of sense there too.”

Synnex has rolled out a subscription service to partners that runs between three to five years depending on the technology and gives them financial flexibility, allowing them to sell ads on the displays without incurring the up-front costs.

“Now instead of having to pay for everything up front, you’re able to pay on a monthly basis, and ultimately, the goal is you sell enough ads to pay for the network, and it becomes a recurring revenue stream for you,” she said. “There are partners who are doing that.”

To create a great product, Synnex partners with, among others, Microsoft Azure to add a cloud layer to the signage, which includes cloud storage of the content, hosting, the content, analytics and remote monitoring; Verizon for a media player; and Google, Stambaugh said.

“When we’re selling signage, we’re not just thinking about signage. We’re thinking about the content creation, the content management, the building of the sign, and the monitoring in some cases and the refresh of content. There’s a lot of infrastructure that’s required for that to happen.”