IDC Vendor Profile: Sharp Electronics Corporation Enhances Smart Meeting Room Collaboration
Sharp Electronics Corporation (SEC) is a renowned global manufacturer of consumer products, including home appliances, home entertainment systems, document systems, collaboration displays, and commercial displays for businesses. This IDC Vendor Profile focuses on Sharp's offerings in the business collaboration space, particularly its displays and data analytics application suite, in conjunction with its Smart Office initiative.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was increasing interest in cloud-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) solutions for voice, video, messaging, and meetings. The pandemic further accelerated the adoption of collaboration tools, with a significant rise in collaboration end users, including remote workers. The collaboration market experienced substantial revenue growth and an increase in the number of end users.
IDC believes that Sharp is well positioned to meet the growing demand for display offerings in business collaboration environments. Sharp recognizes the changing workforce dynamics and offers tools to support diverse workstyles, such as certified touchscreen displays for conference rooms and Dynabook laptops with touchscreen capability. Additionally, Sharp's Synappx application suite provides real-time intelligence for meeting and collaboration spaces.
The Sharp Smart Office initiative outlines the company's vision for a modern office environment, encompassing employee messaging, safety and wayfinding, building management, meetings, and document workflows. To realize this vision, Sharp is refining its go-to-market strategy, expanding market coverage, building ecosystem partnerships, and adapting to changing purchasing models.
However, IDC acknowledges that Sharp's brand awareness and mindshare in the competitive UC and collaboration markets are not as high as in other consumer and commercial product areas. Sharp needs to focus on developing business alliances and channel partnerships specific to the UC&C market to enhance its presence in this space.
Gain insights into Sharp’s offerings in the business collaboration space and its vision for a modern office environment by reading our comprehensive white paper.