Digital Picture Canvas (DPC) Market

Who are the current players?

Meural

Details

Price $445-$545

Wifi Yes

Power Uses power cable into electrical outlet

Frame Wooden

Multi-image Yes

Gestures Swipable to switch images

Market Overview

The good and bad.

Good

- Technology seems to be there.

• Wifi
• Gestures
• Apps to change images

- Multiple companies in the market space.

Bad

- Price for a good canvas is still above $100.

- Digital art distribution channels for most canvases are closed. Most have proprietary systems in which you have to go through to display the art. Lack of inputs on screens makes it difficult to put any image up.

- Adoption seems to be slow.

Perfect Digital Canvas

Concept

- The canvas will need to have custom software. Preferred code bases will be built with Open Frameworks and Processing. Code should be open source and hosted via Github.

- All parts should be able to be found online via common electronic component suppliers along with ShopGoodwill and eBay.

Components

- Screen/Display

- Microcontroller board

- Operating System

- Sensors (Swipe image switching, touch image swapping, WiFi, etc.)

It should always be about the art.

Is there a market for digital art?

At the moment, 90% of people we talked to on the street weren't able to name a digital visual artist.

However, when we mentioned Instagram is a visual network of photographers. People were able to name a favorite Instragram user.

Would someone pay to keep an Instagram image (or any digital art) on their wall or table? 

There's no doubt about it, digital picture frames failed. Was it because of marketing? Execution? Usability?

It was probably all of the aforementioned. There's also currently not a market that's exclusive enough to drive demand for digital art.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The market can exist!

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻. 

But we believe that until someone creates the perfect digital canvas (see this slide), there will never become a market for it.