Samsung Launches Its 24″ All-In-One Kiosk And Supporting Software Partner Ecosystem

June 30, 2021 by Dave Haynes

Samsung has started marketing its new all-in-one kiosk beyond the South Korean market, timing the launch with the announcement of a substantial ecosystem of fintech and Point Of Sale partners.

One of the Samsung partners, GRUBBRR, says that in trial deployments already done with the kiosk, restaurant operators using the kiosks and GRUBBRR self-service ordering software were seeing order values jump by 40% to 50% based on predictive and suggestive selling.

The premise, GRUBBRR CEO Sam Zietz said in a briefing earlier this week, is that a good user experience and data integration can get beyond old-school upselling (suggesting people add fries, for example) into more elaborate and targeted suggestions – like suggesting bottled water, not a milkshake, when customers order salads off the screen.

The 24-inch touchscreen display runs off an embedded SoC (System on Chip) processor (like its “smart signage” displays), and the Tizen operating system. The units have a modular design to enable different actions, including a fully integrated EMV terminal cradle for credit cards, barcode and QR code reader, a built-in printer and Wi-Fi. It also has an anti-microbial coating.

“Samsung is disrupting the kiosk market with its innovative and secure self-service capabilities that are ready to use out-of-the-box and within reach for any business,” says Mark Quiroz, Vice President, Display Division, Samsung Electronics America. “The touch display with a speaker, printer, scanner, payment solution was designed with the customer in mind.”

The Kiosk has a generic design intended to make it suitable for countertop, wall mounting or on a floor stand without requiring construction.

The kiosk also uses Samsung’s Knox security technology, “designed to protect its hardware, payment platform and application, as well as customer information, against external threats such as hacking.”

Along with GRUBBRR, the new kiosk ecosystem includes Softpoint, Nanonation (we know Nano as digital signage software, but its roots are in kiosks), Intuiface, 900 Solutions Corp., Big Digital Corp., Global P.O.S, EuroPOS, and Nowbusking.

I asked Zietz in the briefing what the attraction was for partnering with Samsung, given there are many ready-to-go and custom options on the market, including those of some well-established companies like Elo.

Zietz conceded there was an obvious attraction to aligning with the marketing, sales and support muscle of a top 10 global brand like Samsung. But he also said many to most hardware options on the market have to consolidate components from multiple small vendors, which is a challenge, while Samsung offers the whole nine yards in a unit.

And he and his team like that Samsung is going after this hard. “Samsung doesn’t dabble in a space, they come in fully committed and create massive disruption with premium products at a reasonable price point. Samsung coming into this space is going to democratize access to kiosks and enable merchants to do things they never thought were possible.”

In the case of GRUBBRR, its software and UX drive the full screen interaction and marry with a larger restaurant management system, that includes the ability to manage larger digital menu displays. It is GRUBBRR, not Samsung’s own MagicINFO, running the signage in GRUBBRR jobs, but the Remote Management module in MagicINFO enables remote device management and control.

As you might expect, Samsung and its ecosystem partners would happily sell all day long to restaurant operators, retailers, hotel owners and facilities operators who need kiosks in the hundreds or thousands of units. But Quiroz says Samsung sees a big “long tail” market for SMB operators, like local smoothie or coffee shops with two or three locations.

The units are described as having a “reasonable price point” and Quiroz suggests between that, the all-in-one, fits-anywhere design and numerous software options, this “democratizes” the self-service kiosk business.

This at least seems like a solid, very timely idea. It’s not like there is a shortage of kiosk suppliers out there, but they are generally smaller companies with limited top-of-mind awareness, and nowhere near the R&D, manufacturing, supply chain and support muscle of a Samsung. You could imagine this being something you could get an office products store, with bundled software apps that launch and activate when plugged in.

It also comes at a time when restaurant operators, in particular, are adopting self-service touchscreens as a way to reduce staff-to-customer contacts for health safety reasons.