Smart is having a tough year, as CEO Neil Gaydon revealed in his recent earnings conference call. IWBs have slowed and although flat panels are growing, that growth is not as fast as was hoped. In the meantime, the Kapp system is taking longer to gain steam in the market and, as we have reported, the firm is looking at strategic alternatives. (Smart Board Considers Sale). Nevertheless, the firm always has interesting things to say and at ISE, it had a meeting room to promote the business and collaboration part of the business, rather than the education developments that we covered at BETT a couple of weeks ago (Smart Simplifies with “Classroom as a Service”).
Smart was emphasising business collaboration. Image:Smart
The Kapp IQ range, which we covered at Infocomm, is the business UltraHD range of products and is now being supplied in 55″, 65″ and 84″, with a new 75″ version being shipped in April (Smart Adds iQ Displays to Kapp). Smart expects quite a bit of its commercial business to move from 65″ to 75″ with the new version.
The IQ range is highly specified, with, for example, an integrated four port USB switch that allows multiple systems to be connected and selected. The HDMI and DisplayPort inputs auto-detect if a system is connected and show this on the menu system. There is RS232 control for sophisticated control systems and a proximity sensor that can detect if somebody is using the system. This can be used to query if a reserved room is actually being used. (We reported from the Fujitsu Forum in 2014 on a system developed by Intel that does something similar and can mark a room as free if it is not being used within a certain time after it was due to be occupied). Smart said that “ad hoc” meetings are the fastest growing segment and these features help to make them more productive.
The IQ range also has “Smart TV” levels of functionality and can run the kind of app that would run on such a system and there is a Kapp API for developers that want to take advantage of this.
Smart has a lot of technology for collaboration and we enjoyed the demos of attaching to a screen using QR codes and using a “continue” feature to effectively move content from the screen to mobile devices. This kind of feature can allow “room replication” so that content in one room can be seen in another. Up to 250 boards can share content.
Smart is close to Microsoft and has a lot of links and facilities that can tie into Skype for Business.
We asked about the verticals that the firm was talking about a couple of years ago – particularly building services and AEC and it seems that the firm remains committed to those verticals, but they are small compared to the mainstream collaboration market. It also has special tools for Agile Scrum software development methods.
Finally, the firm told us that it is adding services such as on-site tech support and warranty.
