PMA Charts Path of Pixels To Prints

By Greg Scoblete On May 5 2003 - 6:00am

Despite an increasingly energetic industry effort to drive consumer digital camera prints to retail, the digital camera owner still prefers to print at home, according to the most recent PMA survey.

Titled "The Path from Pixels to Prints" the PMA report canvassed digital camera sales and use trends, with an emphasis on the all-important issue of whether, and how, consumers are making prints from their digital cameras.

The good news from the retail perspective: sales of digital cameras continue to grow, and the frequency at which the digital camera owner prints is up — from 14 percent in 2001 to 20 percent in 2002.

The bad news for retailers with a stake in the print dollar: far and away, digital camera owners are printing at home using a photo printer or home computer printer. Only 4 percent of respondents indicated they had made prints using a self-serve kiosk (with multiple responses allowed) and another 6 percent indicated they brought digital images to a camera store, minilab or other retail location.

"Convincing digital camera users to have their prints made in a retail environment could truly be a challenge," the report noted.

Despite a lag in the service end, the hardware is flourishing. Market revenue for digital still cameras grew to $2.96 billion in 2002, with projections for 2003 household penetration at 33 percent. In 2002, 40 percent of all digital cameras sold featured resolutions of 3 megapixels or more.

The average selling price of digital cameras across all resolutions was $340. Cameras in the 2-megapixel range represented the market's mainstream in 2002, with 38 percent of the unit sales in 2002.