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Digital prints increase, home inkjet use losing ground

May 8, 2005

Fotolia: The volume of prints made from digital still camera images increased by 69 percent for the year ended February 2005, according to the most recent PMA Processing Survey. Online printing accelerated, reaching 207 percent in the 12 months ended February 2005.

Printing volumes on retail minilabs grew more than twice as fast as the overall rate of 69 percent. Growth in home printing has slowed down in the past few months. For the period of March 2004 through February 2005, the volume of prints made at home grew by only 18 percent, the lowest growth rate reported so far. This is also below digital camera unit growth, which exceeded 35 percent in February.

The rapid growth in the volume of prints made by retailers or on kiosks has resulted in the shift of digital printing share away from home printers and toward other printing options. For the year ending in February, 51 percent of digital prints were made on home printers, down from 73 percent in the year earlier period. Including prints made on kiosks, local retailers nearly doubled their share as their percent increased from 18.8 percent to 35.1 percent (the sum of retail and kiosk methods, excluding online orders).

The online share reported here includes orders placed at both brick-and-mortar and pure online service providers. For the period of March 2004 through February 2005 this share went to 10.4 percent from 5.7 percent the previous year. According to the survey, as of February, almost one out of five prints ordered online were picked up at a retail location.

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