Gokis Kiosk Self-Service

Trends with Camera Phones by PMA

PMA today released some data about camera phone users and how they behave as far as printing pictures. All of which has ramifications for the photo kiosk and kiosks in general.

According to Fotolia it would appear that image quality needs and ease of use still needs to improve before the mass market uses a camera phone instead of their regular digital camera.

Here is the story link on PMAI. It's interesting to watch the camera phone market as it does have direct impact to the self-service photo kiosk market and how self-service kiosks are used in picture processing for the mass consumer.

According to the soon to be released 2005 PMA U.S. Consumer Photo Buying Report, 10.2 percent of households owned cameraphones by the end of 2004. As more images are captured using cameraphones, these images are of growing interest to wireless service providers, retailers, and others in related markets. The PMA consumer study provides insight into the profile of a cameraphone owner and their cameraphone usage.

Who's using cameraphones? The demographics of these households are similar to that of digital camera households. Above average rates of ownership are exhibited by households headed by persons with higher education degrees and households with children, and ownership increases with income. So not surprisingly, 65 percent of cameraphone owners also owned a digital camera.

The average age of cameraphone users, which was 36 years, fell below that of camera owners in 2004. Also, unlike digital cameras, cameraphones appear to be evenly adopted by males and females early in their life cycle.

What are they doing with their cameraphone? In 2004, 27 percent of cameraphone households did not take any pictures with their phone. Of the 73 percent that did take pictures; they averaged about 21 shots during the year. Less people chose to e-mail these pictures or transmit them wirelessly in 2004 than in 2003 -- 36 compared to 46 percent. The percent of households that viewed their pictures on their cameraphone screen increased from 83 to 93 percent and the percent that printed grew from 6 to 11 percent. Out of the 11 percent of households that made prints, 83 percent chose to e-mail their images and print at home, and 10 percent e-mailed and printed at retail. Only 2 percent of households that printed cameraphone images used a kiosk.

Why aren't more users printing? Not having a need to print or just wanting to view images on the screen topped the list of reasons why cameraphone users did not print. Perhaps not all people would lack interest though if the process was easier and the prints were better. Many households also cited quality issues as a deterrent to printing or they thought the process was too complicated.

Read rest of story on PMAI

Posted by keefner at May 23, 2005 07:25 PM