Despite a flat market, sentiment in the digital signage industry has turned more positive in Q3: Hopes for Q4 are high, but not everyone will emerge happy from this year. Key insights from the latest DBCI survey.
The digital signage market has shown little growth in 2024 so far. However, our latest DBCI (Digital Signage Business Climate Index) survey revealed a shift in sentiment among market participants in Q3: The index assessing the status quo of the industry rose to 42.89 (on a scale of -100 to +100), up from 29.29 in Q2, reflecting greater contentment with the current market conditions.
Overall, the industry has also become more optimistic regarding future business prospects, with the index climbing to 51.35 from 27.86 in the previous quarter. This means most market participants expect a strong Q4.
Sentiment vs. reality
This positive outlook is somewhat incongruous with the actual market situation: LCD display sales, which dominate the mass market, remained stagnant in Q3, continuing a near two-year trend of underperformance. While LED displays recorded double-digit growth, they couldn’t counterbalance the revenue declines from LCD sales. The disconnect between market sentiment and tangible results suggests that the optimism hinges heavily on Q4, which is traditionally the strongest quarter of the year.
Key players are emerging
The market development so far points to a modest single-digit growth for digital signage in 2024. But some larger integrators and CMS providers are expected to emerge as the winners: For CMS providers, their SaaS revenues allow them to maintain steady growth between 10 to 15 percent.
The system integration sector shows growth rates between 5 to 10 percent, but this growth is driven by only a few larger players, while sales for most SMEs are either stagnant or declining. The big integrators, on the other hand, are growing both organically and through acquisitions, and the gap between the two is widening. The market will remain challenging for everyone but while the large players are still able to capitalize on the current conditions, the road ahead remains uncertain for the smaller ones.