News

Kodak promises digital prints in 7 minutes

February 8, 2004

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- The latest advance in old-fashioned photography is coming soon: a self-service kiosk that can convert a roll of 35mm film into prints in as little as seven minutes.

Eastman Kodak Co.'s Picture Maker film-processing stations will be test-marketed in Detroit this month, with a full-scale rollout set for later this year in pharmacies, supermarkets and photo-specialty shops across the United States and Europe, according to a story in Newsday.
Last fall, the world's largest maker of photographic film unveiled an ambitious new strategy to accelerate its push into new digital markets. At the same time, it acknowledged that its traditional photography businesses -- a century-old cash cow -- were in irreversible decline.

The kiosks appear designed to plug a gap between photography's old and new ways of creating images and perhaps even slow the faster-than-expected migration of shutterbugs to digital cameras.

"It is very easy to believe that this could change the trajectory in the decline of film," said Kent McNeley, general manager of Kodak's consumer output operations, in the article.

The kiosks will allow customers to preview, crop, enlarge and tidy up their snapshots, then print only those they want, a benefit that digital camera users already enjoy. Instead of negatives, the machines also will store the photos on a digital CD.

Kodak acquired the rapid film-processing technology from Applied Science Fiction Inc. of Austin, Texas, for $32 million last year. More than 150 new patents used in creating the film kiosk will make it difficult for competitors to match, Kodak said.

Kodak is hoping the film kiosk's relatively low price tag -- $30,000 to $40,000 -- will lure retailers who might balk at installing a digital minilab, which can cost anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000, according to the article.

The photo-kiosk business has become increasingly competitive -- Japanese rivals led by Sony Corp. are winning customers such as Kinko's, the self-service copying chain -- but Kodak still dominates the U.S. market with Picture Maker kiosks in some 24,000 locations.