*NEWS*PMA SAYS HOME INKJET PRINTS DOWN

[Anonymous]

PMA:(Photo Marketing Association)

says Digital Print Volume Up.

Digital prints increase while home inkjet prints loses ground.

The PMA (Photo Marketing Association) shows significant print growth from
digital cameras. Home printing decreased while retail and online printing
increased. Home printing still owns the lion share of the all prints made from a
digital camera at 51%.

February PMA Processing Survey shows volume of prints from digital camera
images increased 75 percent

The volume of prints made from digital-still camera images increased by 69
percent for the year ending in February, according to the most recent PMA
Processing Survey. Online printing growth has accelerated reaching 207 percent
in the 12 months ending February. Printing volumes on retail minilabs grew more
than twice as fast as the overall rate of 69 percent. Growth in home printing
has slowed down in the past few months. For the period of March 2004 through
February 2005, the volume of prints made at home grew by only 18 percent, the
lowest growth rate reported so far. This is also below digital camera unit
growth which exceeded 35 percent in February.

The rapid growth in the
volume of prints made by retailers or on kiosks has resulted in the shift of
digital printing share away from home printers and towards other printing
options. For the year ending in February, 51 percent of digital prints were made
on home printers, down from 73 percent in the year earlier period. Including
prints made on kiosks, local retailers nearly doubled their share as their
percent increased from 18.8 to 35.1 percent (the sum of retail and kiosk
methods, excluding online orders). The online share reported here includes
orders placed at both brick-and-mortar and pure online service providers. For
the period of March 2004 through February 2005 this share went to 10.4 percent
from 5.7 percent the previous year. According to the survey, as of February,
almost one out of five prints ordered online were picked up at a retail
location.

The rate of decline in national film processing activity has
accelerated reaching 13.3 percent in the 12 months ending February with much
higher estimated declines in the months of January and February. The mix of
formats associated with processing continued to shift in favor of one-time-use
cameras. That component represented 24.9 percent of the total processing volume during the 12 months ending February 2005.

[Author]

June 8, 2005 at 12:21 PM