KDDI's Statements of Interest for Workshop on Web-based Signage

Toshiyuki Okamoto
Satoru Takagi
Mitsuru Yamada
Ryouichi Kawada

KDDI is interested in Web-based signage from the following viewpoints.

Can it enlarge the market by price reduction in comparison with existing digital signage?

Current Japanese digital signage is generally the closed system which is based on the verticalization model than WWW. The conventional digital signage systems have functioned well mainly because they used small amounts of large-sized display by comparing with consumer mobile devices.

However , an open platform will be desirable since the target will be expanded to a variety of devices such as a tablet or smart-phone. The conventional closed system is high-performance, but very application specific. Therefore, if that characteristic is followed, a great deal of cost is necessary for the support of a variety of devices. Furthermore, the long tail market is hard to match a closed system.

We think that the Web base system has the advantage in terms of cost reduction by the following factors to solve these problems.

• The class of contents producers spreads by adopting common web format as contents format for signage, and the competition will be eventually promoted.
• Production cost will decrease by many parts of the signage terminal being communalized with a PC and a smartphone.
• The further enhancements of the effect mentioned above will take place by open-sourcing of the contents format, the terminal software and authoring environments.

Can it strengthen ability for anti-disaster compared with existing degital signage?

If, by web based architecture, the new digital signage systems can get more extensive information articulacy than current ones, we can expect that they can possess the ability that can support adaptation to circumstances for an unexpected disaster.

On the other hand, the current Web technology hasn't enough ability for anti-disaster. We pointed this out at The Future of Offline Web App Workshop held on last November. And we pointed out too that the reinforcement of the processing capacity of the map information was particularly necessary. And we are proposing the standardization of the technology to solve it in SVG WG.

In signage, it may be said that the map information is the most important representation style at the time of a disaster. Therefore, we are convinced that our suggestion about the map is the element which is indispensable in signage.

In addition, the use case that the personal mobile devices such as smartphones receive disaster relief information from a large-sized fixed public digital signage when a cell-phone line has gone down is assumed. At this time, a commonized and open data format will be effective too.

For existing digital signage, are there any new problems?

How can it support the following functions and specifications that current digital signage has? In addition, most of these will be strongly related with arguments in Web App WG.

• Full screen
• Screen support with a variety of resolution to reach the super high-resolution screen from VGA
  The part is called Responsive Web or Responsive Images and is argued in the W3C.
• Confirmation of the operation state including the mechanism that a server can confirm that the contents that it should display are displayed
  The function corresponding to an event pushed by a server may become the starting point of the examination.

Can it support the following functions expected as future functions of digital signage?

• Multi-screen
• NFC
• Public WiFi access spot
• Street camera and microphone
• Other various sensors