News

HP acquires Snapfish, takes aim at photo kiosks

March 31, 2005

Investor's Business Daily: It takes four minutes to see why Hewlett-Packard bought the photo-sharing site Snapfish. That's how long the drive is from HP's Silicon Valley headquarters to the nearest Walgreens store. For 29 cents each, digital camera owners can plug memory cards into a touchscreen kiosk and get photo-quality prints within seconds. Every picture Walgreens processes means one less printed at home. For HP, that means fewer ink cartridges to replace or printers to upgrade. "People are interested in buying photos the way they used to," said Gartner analyst Peter Grant. "They want to walk into the store, hand over their film, shop for an hour and pick up the photos later." They're also moving to online photo sharing and printing services like Snapfish. That's turned those services into a valuable prize. Click here to read the full story.