Another year, another slew of headlines about weak retail performance and rock-bottom consumer confidence. On the back of a sluggish peak Christmas trading period, there is even talk of vendors being forced into pushing up prices yet again in 2025. Just what everyone wants to hear after a solid four years of spiralling inflation. There’s [...]
Remember DVDs? A recent story that caught our attention is the sad but hardly surprising demise of DVD rental company Redbox in the US. Back in the day, Redbox was a true pioneer of self-service kiosks. Its business model was based on placing vending machine-type kiosks where customers could rent DVDs from in and around [...]
The first time most people heard of biometric technology was when they got their first biometric passport. These futuristic-sounding travel documents have been the norm in the UK for close to 20 years, and the government issues some five million of them every year. ‘E-passports’ are still the most visible example of biometric technology in [...]
There is a school of thought that kiosks and smartphones are in direct competition. That everything you can do on a kiosk, you can do on a mobile device. Pay for shopping without the mediation of a cashier, order food, check-in at a hotel or for an appointment, even identify yourself for security and access [...]
We recently published a blog assessing the role self-service kiosks are playing in the shift towards a ‘cashless’ society. In it, we argued that the kiosk industry should be cautious about pushing the cashless ticket too fast. People are by and large far from averse to innovation and new ideas. But as we’ve seen with [...]
The start of the new academic year is a busy time of new beginnings for families and professionals. It means new classes, perhaps a new school, college or even leaving home for university. For schools, it means new intakes, new goals, starting afresh the journey to deliver the best educational experiences possible for every student. [...]
In the hyper-accelerated world of digital technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) feels like it has been around forever. A little like 5G mobile (and AI, for that matter), it’s a technology that got talked about and hyped-up long before it was ever really ready to make a difference out there ‘in the wild’, as [...]
In today’s digital world, the idea of receiving a printed catalogue the size and weight of a small paving slab through the post for the purposes of ordering goods for home delivery seems exotically quaint and old-fashioned. But in their prime, catalogue retailers were not just powerhouses of consumerism. In many respects, they laid the [...]
Here at Acante, we love a good story of kiosk innovation that showcases the endless potential of this wonderfully flexible technology. This month, our collective eye was caught (excuse the pun!) by news of Eyebot, a US-based start-up that has developed a self-service vision test kiosk. Currently being trialled in several shopping malls, the kiosks [...]
As digitisation continues with its global takeover, the list of ordinary day-to-day tasks we can complete virtually, remotely - whatever you want to call it - continues to grow and grow. You don’t have to be that old to remember a time when mailing someone meant pen, paper and a stamp, payments were mostly made [...]
