Collaborations
Customer A (A large global consumer brand)
Eight were asked to develop a Touchscreen for Customer A’s security & access controllers using their older technology push button keypad. We were given the protocol information, and a Touchscreen. From there we were able to develop a new 7” slimline Touchscreen that connects to their controller via their proprietary bus.
Eight further developed a 5” version of the above Touchscreen which would also work in landscape and portrait. In addition, we updated both products to work on their new range of alarm controllers.
Customer A was losing market share in the Australasian market to a number of competitors. Previously one of the largest suppliers in the ANZ market, Customer A had fallen behind in their product offering. Furthermore, Customer A did not have any resources to address the drop in sales, and were already losing in excess of 10% market share PA. One of the main reasons was the limited range of keypads (at that time there were 2), and in particular, end users were requesting Touchscreens.
It was also noted that even if Customer A did allocate resource, it would have taken a number of years to release due to the strict development processes and guidelines.
One of Customer A’s distributors (now separated in to a company Eight Development), had developed a Touchscreen locally which worked on their protocol. After a period of time in the local market, Customer A tested the unit and underwent customer feedback sessions. In 2014 the industry’s first HD 7” Touchscreen was released under Customer A’s brand name.
This unit has slowed down in sales since the launch of the smaller 5” version, however there have been thousands of these units sold and it remains a current product.
Customer B (A large global consumer brand)
Eight were asked to develop a Touchscreen for Customer B’s security & access controllers using their older technology Touchscreen. We were given the protocol information, and a Touchscreen. From there we were able to develop a new 5” slimline Touchscreen that connects to their controller via their proprietary bus.
Customer B had decided to build a capacitive HD 5” Touchscreen due to feedback from their customers, on their older technology resistive Touchscreen. They had scoped the project at a cost of nearly USD1M and a lead time of 2 years. The high cost was mainly due to the cost of specialist engineers for this product that weren’t able to do the work within Customer B at that time. They also released an RFP for the supply of this Touchscreen.
Due to the success of the Touchscreen in the ANZ markets, Customer B invited Eight to provide a quote for the development, engineering and manufacture of their Touchscreen. The brief was to build a capacitive Touchscreen that operates exactly the same as their current resistive Touchscreen.
We delivered a fully UL compliant Touchscreen for a project cost of 1/5 of the Customer B USD1M estimate, and in half the time (12 months). This included adhering to their strict quality development programme.
We’ve now supplied thousands of these screens to Customer B.
Customer C (A large Australian distributor )
A large AV and security distributor in Australia, required a commercial grade Touchscreen that would run their suite of applications seamlessly on one device. This unit can be updated remotely, PoE powered, and can be configured (remotely) by the installer to run specific applications.
Customer C are a large security and AV distributor with a footprint throughout Australia. They sell many leading brands of products that are used for Security, Multimedia, Home Theatre, IT, Intercoms, Meeting Room Booking, CCTV etc. They were getting feedback that more homes and businesses were using screens for both single purpose and multi purpose applications over using a cellphone. Reasons included:
- Convenience
- Compatibility with some phones / tablets
- Some businesses don’t want to give all staff phones
- Control over what applications were loaded for security and compliance reasons
Eight developed a 7” Touchscreen using the latest technology on Android (for universal compatibility) which is purpose built to be mounted on a wall (and not in a pocket), taking into account the challenges of being powered 24/7 (generic phones / tablets are not designed to be powered 24/7).
We also locked down the device so only Apps that the integrator wanted installed could be used on the device. It also tied the integrator in to Customer C because they only allowed Apps from products they sold. The devices can also be updated and managed remotely by the integrator.
