News

Candid camera: Phone camera prints from photo kiosks take off

June 20, 2004

SYDNEY, Australia - More than two million camera phones will be sold in Australia this year, making it the fastest-selling electronic appliance of all time, according to a story in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The increase in camera usage makes the photographic industry happy but the question is, "Will all those cameras turn around the decline that has undermined the industry's bottom line?"

Paul Curtis, executive director of the Photographic Industry Council of Australia, is confident they will. "We think it's absolutely fantastic. It's long been our dream to get everyone to carry a camera and we are on the verge of realizing that," he says.

The turn-around is due to a new generation of do-it-yourself digital printing kiosks from manufacturers such as Kodak and Fuji that print shots from mobile phones and PDAs on the spot via Bluetooth and infra-red wireless technologies.

A fleet of these kiosks are being moved into Australian camera shops so that you can take a photo on the phone, pop into the nearest photo lab, point the phone at the machine, press a button and, within a minute or two, take delivery of a thermal-dye transfer print.

Fuji says it has 500 kiosks around Australia that either have the wireless capability or are in the process of being modified.

Kodak has about 100 Picture Maker do-it-yourself kiosks equipped with both infra-red and Bluetooth. Another 300 machines are being upgraded to "camera phone-enabled" status.