Well, another big player announced their entrance into the digital signage world today: AT&T. It makes sense somewhat because of the network they’ve already established.
AT&T has struck strategic agreements with ExtendMedia, Qumu and Stratacache, which are software companies that specialize in formatting and packaging content that is suitable for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer applications, such as streaming video, live and on-demand webcasting, e-learning and virtual trade shows, as well as the delivery of advertising over emerging media networks.
AT&T plans to complete deployment of nearly $70 million in network infrastructure and development investment by year-end to support its digital media capabilities across the United States and Europe (European Union countries) and Japan, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan within Asia. Over the next several months, the company will integrate the software expertise of ExtendMedia, Qumu, and Stratacache with its own capabilities to provide companies with one-stop shopping and simplified network-based solutions to encode, deliver, manage and support video and multimedia files. Businesses will also be able to combine these services with AT&T’s industry-leading security capabilities, hosting, applications and professional services to address their most pressing needs with complete and reliable solutions.
With today’s announcement, AT&T is responding to customers’ need to cope with exploding demand for rich and graphics-intensive multimedia content that has been fueled by the wide adoption of high speed Internet services, sophisticated computing technologies and the need to deliver to multiple play-out devices including digital signs, PCs and smart wireless devices. The content delivery network (CDN) services market totaled nearly $900 million in 2007, according to analyst firm IDC, and is expected to significantly grow in the future.
This announcement is not surprising to me in the slightest, but becomes another reason to watch the digital signage industry. I posted earlier about Google’s entrance into digital signage. With some of the largest network players and internet advertisers entering, it would seem foolish to discount the signage industry based solely on lack of specific metric measurement.
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