The already bristling digital signage and self-service market got a little bit more competitive recently when the German company friendlyway AG announced it was building a marketing plan for the United States.

Founded in 1998, the company boasts over 10,000 systems and software installations in the field, primarily in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

"The U.S. market is highly attractive, and I think with our composer software we have something very exciting and very competitive to offer," said Andreas Stutz, friendlway AG's chief operating officer.

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The name game

Friendlyway's first foray into the U.S. market began in 1999 with the founding of a company called friendlyway inc. in San Francisco, an exclusive U.S. marketer of the German company's solutions.

In 2006, the German friendlyway — friendlyway AG — dropped its exclusive licensing agreement with the California-based company (which has since changed its name to PSI Corp., following a merger with an existing kiosk company), opening the door for it to begin marketing directly in the United States.

"I'm very happy with the new situation we have right now — we are now free in marketing in the U.S.," Stutz said. "We do not have the exclusive licensing agreement that focused all of our business to San Francisco."

So what exactly does the company plan to bring to the American table? Stutz is bullish on large-format signage that interacts with mobile devices like cell phones and PDAs. "We think that interactive kiosks and digital signage and mobile information will all be getting closer, interacting with one another," he said.

He pointed to a recent project the company developed for a leading German out-of-home advertising agency — an agency that had been using static, paper-based signage. Friendlyway replaced those signs with "digital posters" that can connect wirelessly with mobile devices.

"When you are looking at one of these ad posters and you see a commercial for the latest movie or Opel automobile, you can withdraw directly from the display, on your Bluetooth (device), further information about the product," he said. "This is the first step — using your mobile device to take information with you. What we find now is that we can go one step further. We use personal information that is anonymized on the PDA or mobile phone to offer personalized information."

A friendlyway visitor welcome touchscreen kiosk system at the Stadtsparkasse.

Although friendlyway AG is arguably a market leader in its home country, it is now entering a very competitive playing field.

Barnaby Page, editor of U.K.-based industry watchdog aka.tv, said the company faces a challenge in adapting its products for a new environment with some very different needs.

"For example, in the U.K. there are a handful of supermarket chains and banks which absolutely dominate on a national scale — there are no real equivalents of the strong regional operators that you have in the U.S.," he said. "At a micro level, things like interior design and layout, the style of the signage, etc. are different — again, meaning you can't just transplant a digital sign or kiosk from one territory to another. Sure, the underlying technology is transferable, but not the implementation."

Geographic differences cut both ways, though, and Page said there is a key difference between Europe and the U.S. that will work in friendlyway's favor: advertiser hunger. Page said advertising agencies in the United States are more eager to find new ways to reach new audiences than their European counterparts. "That need is growing (in Europe), for sure, but anxiety over the declining reach of mainstream TV hasn't yet reached the levels I sense in the U.S.," he said.

Rufus Connell, IT research director for Frost & Sullivan, said the kiosk and digital signage game is chiefly driven by referrals, which bodes well for the German interloper.

"I may be a bit of an optimist, but the fact is that they have been successful in Europe, which means they have the building blocks to succeed elsewhere," he said. "Friendlyway has a lot of global accounts – Shell, Texaco, Marriott, HSBC, T-Mobile, Nokia. If they can leverage those accounts as both references and also as customers, then their future is bright."