DailyDOOH

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

As we said the week before last “over the next two months we will be doing short but slightly more detailed individual posts about the digital signage software vendors who appeared in our list of ‘Top 10 Digital Signage Vendors 2009‘” in preparation for our new ranking list that will be published in February 2010.

So, as promised here’s our first post – a look at the 2008 and 2009 Number one on our list, EnQii Corp.

We think that EnQii was far too cautious outside the US and in general did far too little to support the industry globally – especially in terms of trade show commitments. When you are number one, when you have lots of money or when you are big we believe that YOU have responsibilities to the industry to help it grow. It may be harsh but we think that EnQii has done far too little in this respect.

In 2009, EnQii exhibited at DSE in Las Vegas in February 2009 and if we are not mistaken that was pretty much it for trade shows. Undoubtedly in its defense EnQii would point at all the good work done by Stuart Armstrong, North Americas President with the Digital Signage Association (indeed, very true) and EnQii are also members of OVAB but that’s not enough.

As everyone seems to be expecting a better 2010 we’d expect EnQii to really step up to the plate next year – do some proper marketing, get their brand out there, use their personal networks to get in the mainstream press and choose which trade shows to support by exhibiting and / or sponsoring (a la BroadSign, Scala and Wireless Ronin = ‘hats off’ and THANKS!!). Let’s put it a bit stronger “it is not acceptable to preserve your VC’s cash by sitting on the sidelines!”.

Anyway, by our reckoning 2009 was very likely a record year for EnQii in terms of revenues and new client wins. We counted almost a dozen major new clients won including the likes of McDonalds, Compass, PDM, Village Roadshow etc. There are also rumours of 3 other big network wins; 1000, 500 and 250 sites respectively that have been won but not yet announced.

EnQii is now pretty much dominant in the health sector in the US. Existing clients of course include Care Media (3,000 sites last year and likely also the same number in 2010), Spectrum, Cruise Media and Take Care Health.

As we have always said about the Health niche, this sector has grown strongly in the recession – pharmaceutical advertising has held up well.

EnQii has also put a major focus in food services and QSR during 2009 and has seemingly grown into a major player with clients such as McDonalds and Compass.

EnQii’s EnGage solution already has a very good music capability (we particularly like the pre-determined playlists feature as well as the dynamic rules based playlists) but we’d expect them to continue improving their software platform in order to better focus still on this sector. Expect software improvement that allow local users to create and update content, menuboards, create quizzes and games etc.

In 2010 we think that EnQii will likely focus a little more on retail merchandising, especially as we see retailers starting to roll out more signage. EnQii will hope that EnGage’s strengths in POS and back end retail links will come into play.

Apart from STRATACACHE (with their USD 25 Million Technology acquisition fund) EnQii are probably the most likely to lead consolidation in the industry.

Don’t be surprised if EnQii announce either the merger with a big US s/w provider sometime in H1 2010 or more likely gobble up one of the vendors also in our Top 10 Digital SIgnage Vendors list.

#DSTop10 posts are kindly sponsored by Magenta Research

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 00:42 @070 and is filed under DailyDOOH Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.