Digital photography is not only sparking sales of filmless cameras, it’s also driving a rollout of in-store photo-printing kiosks that Kodak, Fuji and other photography materials companies monitor over the web, Francie Mendelsohn, president of kiosk researchers Summit Research Associates, tells InternetRetailer.com.
More than a dozen providers of digital photography services are using the web to deploy and maintain about 50,000 in-store kiosks throughout the U.S. in chains including Walgreen Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Mendelsohn says, noting that growth in the number of these kiosks has surged over the last year. She says that Fuji alone grew from having only a few in-store kiosks last year to about 10,000 today. Kodak has about 35,000 in-store photo kiosks in the U.S., though many of them are pre-digital and it’s unclear how many of them have been converted to digital photography, she adds.
In addition to photography companies like Kodak and Fuji, kiosk software companies like TouchPoint Solutions Inc. are rolling out in-store digital photo kiosks, Mendelsohn says.
The average in-store digital photo kiosk sells about 100 prints per day at about 42 cents per print, she says. In some cases retailers will share a percentage of the sales with the kiosk providers, though in other cases retailers will own the kiosks outright and pay a photography company for the photo printing materials, she adds.
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