businessinfomag.uk magazine 26 DISPLAYS Displays are becoming smarter and more versatile. Business Info finds out more fromAndy Haywood, Head of Global Sales Europe at Samsung European Displays Organisation Well connected rooms and passenger information displays in airports. “Every sector has its own vertical needs, but the products themselves are designed to be flexible,” explains Haywood. “A 24/7 passenger information display in an airport would need to be a certain brightness because the ambient lighting is controlled. Move into the corporate sector, and the same displays in a meeting room won’t be run at the same brightness; they’ll be turned down from say 700 nits to 500 nits to prolong the life of the display and to improve return on investment. Everybody approaches things in a slightly different way.” Expert partners In order to meet diverse customer requirements, Haywood says Samsung relies on channel partners that have indepth knowledge of their customers, as well as expertise in display technologies. “We only go to market through our channel, through distribution and through resellers and integrators. Partners range from small specialist integrators that provide a very personalised service and who don’t just work with SMBs but also with major corporates and multinationals, through to multinational resellers that are able to provide consistency of product delivery to large enterprises around the world. There is a need for all sorts of resellers with different skill sets and capabilities.” So, what for Samsung have been the big growth areas of the last 24 months? “Some of the most interesting trends to have emerged since COVID are things like virtual studios and virtual production – reducing the need to have multiple people in one location to produce something, whether that’s one of the recent Star Wars movies, if you’re doing big screen, or product advertising. Visual production facilities have improved so much that there’s no longer the need to rent enormously expensive studios. That’s been a really interesting development,” explains Haywood. “Another area of growth is command and control. As everybody becomes more aware of the capabilities of command and control, it’s no longer seen as just a security piece. It also has a role to play in manufacturing, controlling factory equipment for example, or looking at ingress and egress in buildings. In a shopping centre, it’s not just a case of tracking cameras and making sure that people are behaving properly; it’s also about monitoring the flow of people and if it looks like traffic is building up in one area, redirecting people to reduce the pressure.” Haywood adds that there is also now more flexibility in the location and positioning of command and control rooms. “In airports, Command and Control no longer needs to be at the top of a control tower. It can be at the bottom of the tower or, as we see more and more now, in a centralised location. I was speaking to a colleague at an event in Frankfurt last week who specialises in financial security, and he’s built a dedicated control room for some of his banking customers that is nowhere near the City of London.” Samsung’s professional displays division addresses more than 80% of the total display market by focusing on nine different verticals – corporate, retail, transportation, education, quick service restaurants (QSR), digital out of home (e.g. sports arenas, entertainment venues and museums), manufacturing, hotels and healthcare – meeting customer needs with its standard product range and some sector-specific solutions, in healthcare for example. Overall, its product range extends from semi-professional products for the SOHO and SMB sectors all the way through to high-end, professional displays designed to run 24/7 at high brightness, with display sizes stretching from 19in desktop monitors up to 98inch professional displays, plus a range of software solutions built around Samsung’s Tizen platform. “In every vertical there are overlaps rather than gaps, so we can meet all customer requirements that I’m aware of right now,” claims Andy Haywood, Head of Global Sales Europe at Samsung European Displays Organisation. This is quite some feat considering the variety of applications and multiple sub-categories you might find in each vertical, such as campus wayfinding, boardroom displays and collaboration solutions in the corporate sector and wayfinding, out of home and retail advertising, command and control Andy Haywood
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