Digital Picture Frames Following Flat-Screen TVs

However there is another area where digital photo frames are beginning to grow as well: businesses. Large and small businesses are beginning to find innovative ways to use these devices, especially as their prices fall and quality improves. Restaurants, corporations, service industries, and retailers all can use digital frames for a variety of useful purposes, and manufacturers are taking notice.

In many ways, this parallels the evolution of flat-screen televisions. Plasma and LCD TVs were first popular with consumers, who loved the sharp images and space advantages. You could hang a flat-screen anywhere on a wall, as opposed to limitations of a bulky traditional CRT TV. As the prices of flat-screens fell, popularity soared, and today CRT TVs are virtually non-existent. Today everyone either owns a flat-screen or will buy one as their next TV.

However you only have to look around your daily life to see how much flat-screen TVs have proliferated. Whether its information displays in airports, menus in fast food restaurants, welcome boards in lobbies, or advertising displays in public areas, they are everywhere. In fact, LCD displays are used almost as much in business as they are in the home.

Sometimes they are information portals - think of the things mentioned, or any display you see in hotel, store, or retailer. They also make broadcast television and internet content available in more places. Break rooms and eating areas now provide television coverage for their employees, and executives in industries that are dependent on changing markets or news now regularly have flat-screens in their offices.

Digital picture frames seem to be on a similar path. Businesses are using digital frames for similar purposes when smaller, cheaper, more mobile LCD display devices are more appropriate. Many businesses now use smaller digital photo frames on reception desks with welcome or other information for visitors. Retailers and restaurants can use them in a similar way for advertising purposes or announcements like ‘specials’ instead of traditional signage. The advantage of a digital picture frame is that the information is dynamic (can change in a slide show type format), easily changeable, and can include more advanced media like video and audio.

Digital frames can also be used for internal purposes as well. Companies can hang them outside conference rooms with the day’s schedule. Announcements can be easily displayed to employees on digital picture frames that hang in common areas. Since many digital frames now have wireless capability that stream data such as news and weather, they make great information portals for customers or employees.

Just as large LCD TVs have found many useful purposes in businesses, smaller, cheaper and more mobile digital picture frames will as well. There are likely dozens of great uses not thought of yet. Manufacturers of digital frames are also watching this trend, looking to repeat their last successful transition of a LCD device from the consumer world to the business world.

Written by Glenn VanLandingham
glenn@digitalsmartframes.com
DigitalSmartFrames.com