New Bits: Photo kiosk popularity, $11 LCD photo frame

[Ben Stafford]

Photo Kiosk Popularity Increasing

The New York Times is carrying an article (also available at CNET) talking about the current (and expected) demand on photo kiosks in retail stores. When we talked with Kodak at CTIA, they also confirmed this trend. According to the article, Kodak has 15,000 kiosks and will be shipping 5,000 - 10,000 more this year. Additionally, Kodak mentioned that a goal with their kiosks is to be able to interact with the EasyShare Gallery (Ofoto). A user could either print from their online gallery or transfer files from removable media to the kiosk and opt to save the images to an online gallery.

Manufacturers are also planning to accomodate the camera phone market by allowing kiosks users to transfer their files from phone to kiosk by Bluetooth or infrared.

Digital photo printing is a very high margin service, far more profitable than the cameras themselves, so manufacturers are scrambling to get a piece of the action. Kodak and Fuji are the largest manufacturers and will probably remain so, but it will be a matter of who's kiosks are best for customers and retailers. Olympus offers retailers a pre-paid card and Fuji can attach a credit card reader to their machines.

Some more snippets from the article:

1.9 billion digital images were printed by all methods, with 57 percent done at home, 33 percent at retail locations and 10 percent through online services. ... by 2007 the number of printed images will rise to 10.7 billion a year and that the share printed at kiosks will grow to 37 percent.

In the coming months, consumers could see changes at kiosks, including wider availability of automatic red-eye reduction, eliminating the need to locate problem eye areas individually on a touch screen. Moreover, print speeds will increase for some instant-print kiosks that produce prints through dye-sublimation or other fast-acting processes.

For the full article, head over to CNET

Cheap DIY LCD Photo Frame

A posting on MAKE (http://www.makezine.com, a site that "brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life") shows a project in progress to create an LCD photo frame out of an $11 Mattel JuiceBox from WalMart.  The creator says: "I'm working on an LCD frame hacked out of a Mattel JuiceBox ($11 at Wal-mart). The 'Box runs uclinux and accepts MMC cards."  There are some mixed reports on whether the $11 price can be found everywhere.

For the full posting, see http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/03/the_11_lcd_phot.html

[Brian]

Kodak's in a pretty good place because they have their fingers in everythig. If they make a couple bad cameras it will hurt, but won't be devastating like it would be to a less diversified company. The ease of access and use of kiosks will certainly make them a popular alternative to online, especially if people can use them to access online photo albums and such.

On the photo frame issue, that's awesome, LOL. Why spend hundres on a real frame when you can get this.

[Andrew]

as far as those photo kiosks go, they do make a lot of sense, and I think most people are going to want a kiosk that's just really simple to use. Grocery stores should especially focus on obtaining simple kiosks while maybe certain "experience" stores (isn't that what Starbucks is trying to become?) should offer kiosks with more editing features and the opportunity to play around while you purchase your prints...the benefit to the store being the longer you stick around the more likely you'll be to buy other things there. In a grocery store you'll have average joes (such as myself) that are there to buy food, sundries, and now pictures and then go...I'll do my editing of images at home if I want to.

[d-roC]

That photo frame is interesting. I know of a company that is selling various sizes now. The most fun part is having a bunch of them around and then having them synced to rhythmicly change the pictures as you give a tour, fun yet can freak people out

[d-roC]

Oh yea;
Bah humbug to letting someone else do my pics. I am 100% digital and will do everything at home else when somone else does it I will have to photo-chop them for not correctly balancing my pics lol

[Ben Stafford]

But you have to admit that you're an exception, er... exceptional. The majority of people printing photographs (and the people targeted by kiosks) don't edit their pictures or if they edit, they do it at home. I choose to use something like that because of the price since I don't buy super-duper photo printers. Also, especially as camera phones become the norm, I can see a lot of people, as the evening/early morning winds down, hitting a 24 hour drugstore to print out the highlights of the evening as they munch on their pizza by the slice.