A sharp turn into Digital Experience - Sharp Inspire Expo 2026 paves the way

Traditionally a hardware vendor, Sharp has spent the last few years consolidating its European operations and reinventing itself as a technology company. In the past the bulk of its sales have been in the SMB market, but its recent acquisitions and restructuring has led to larger corporate customers, and it is now eyeing the enterprise space.

Yoichi Tomata, President of Sharp Europe, speaking at the Sharp Inspire Expo in Lisbon explained that the company’s positive brand legacy meant customers trusted Sharp, but innovations in AI means the way people work is changing and Sharp will be delivering more services to meet those demands. He said:

The existing Sharp customer experience encourages us to go in our new corporate direction, and pushes us to adjust to the needs of our customers today. We asked them what matters most when choosing technology, and the top three priorities were companies they can trust (78%), high quality (76%) and real expertise (73%).

Tomata continued:

Inspire Expo 2026 marks a defining moment for Sharp in Europe. Over the past five years we have deliberately transformed our business - expanding our IT services capabilities, fully integrating AV and unifying our business units.

Digital Experience 

In 2019 Sharp Europe bought UK company Complete IT as part of its European IT services expansion. There followed acquisitions of Swiss IT services company ITpoint Systems in 2021 and in 2024 French company Apsia, which specialized in digital transformation and Cloud integration. The company has now brought those acquisitions together in its Sharp DX (Digital Experience) brand.

Stuart Sykes, CEO of Sharp UK said the company realised back in 2018 that it would have to diversify from the hardware market:

We had our workplace business that designs and fits out modern workplaces, we put in our meeting room solutions, our AV solutions, our print solutions, and our IT solutions. It's a great business, and the AV strand was starting to thrive, but we realized, if we were really going to take that next step to be a technology partner, we  needed to make some acquisitions. We made the UK Complete IT acquisition just before the pandemic, and it was a real stepping stone in terms of skill sets to take us from being a valuable print, AV design supplier into the technology services marketplace.

The company believes that by bringing together expertise in cloud, cybersecurity, managed services, digital workplace and AI driven solutions it will be able to scale its offerings more effectively, and the enterprise space is included in that. The end game for customers is what Sharp calls the frontier, an AI led organization.

Olivier Massonnat, CEO Sharp DX France, Italy and Spain, added:

We help the customer, whatever the size, but upper mid market, corporate and enterprise is really a target for us now. First the customer is putting all its systems on the Cloud, then we work with them on their digital transformation, and then we can arrive at AI transformation.

Of course this strategic direction is something of a change from the old hardware model that the Sharp brand is most known for, but Trevor Budd, UK Strategic Marketing Director says the company has been quietly in the enterprise sector for a while. Budd commented:

We've been on quite a journey as a business, historically, but we're already on a new journey, with larger SMB to corporate customers. I think that now with Sharp solutions we're looking at a considerable proportion of our total revenues that are actually already in the enterprise space. We've got a strong go to market capability in the UK, and now we have to be designing for SME, corporate, and enterprise and it's going to be really fascinating.

He argues that having a strong brand like Sharp with 1000s of client end users is helpful, but the company is also working in true partnerships with its smaller number of high value clients:

It's really exciting for us to be in that corporate/enterprise arena, because we can do it all. We design, develop and take to market. The story is really holistic in a sense, rather than just Microsoft business applications, just display solutions or just if you build AV systems into another airport.

Budd believes the company is now in the position to be able to move to the next level.

It hasn't been the right time for us to invest huge amounts of money and awareness because the brand, the position, and the story wasn't ready there. It is there now. We needed to go through a world where the whole conversation is about, ‘aren't you the brand that that was on the Man United shirts’. That world has gone, and we've been doing an awful lot since then. The conversation needs to be, ‘I totally understand that Sharps has got tremendous portfolio capability, and is part of today's world’.

My take

Sharp Europe is in the process of re-inventing itself from what was a very successful hardware vendor into a partnership company that can offer everything from data management and security to AI implementation guidance and consultancy.  It has done this through careful acquisitions, and working closely with its channel partners. For its customers, many of whom are worried about AI, security and future proofing their business systems, the announcements from the recent Sharp Inspire Expo on unifying its services into Sharp DX, and increasing investment in its European Technology Support Center in Warsaw should give them some confidence. For Sharp, this approach will also allow it to increase its presence in the higher value corporate and enterprise spaces.