Camera phones proving good for traditional camera firms
Instead of eating up on the traditional camera business, camera phones are proving to be good for companies like Kodak, especially for its printing business, as the ubiquitous camera phones actually prompt more people to print pictures.
Today, there are some 600 Kodak printing kiosks all over the country catering to the printing needs of camera phone users. It’s a revenue channel that wasn’t even there before and one that Techtrends, the newly appointed authorized distributor of Kodak products in the
“Camera phones are helping our sales because people need to print what they’ve taken using their camera phones. We get lots of business from selling the equipment and supplies for the kiosks,” says Raymond Albert, president and CEO of Techtrends.
Albert says there are studies that show an explosive increase in the number of pictures being taken around the world as people gain access to camera phones.
“It’s good for us in the photo printing business. A small segment of the market prints at home, but most print at stores or kiosks,” he notes, adding that it’s cheaper to print at kiosks a 4x6 picture using regular photographic paper than printing at home using a personal inkjet printer and paper.
Kodak has existing partnerships for its printing equipment with leading cellular phone manufacturers. Albert says there are even camera phone models with a Kodak icon on the touchpad that shows a list of the Kodak kiosk locations nationwide.
By turning over its consumer division to Techtrends, Kodak also effectively transfers the sales, marketing and service functions to Albert’s 38-man team who were mostly former members of the management team of Kodak’s Consumer Digital Group and Film Photofinishing Systems. Techtrends reports to Kodak
“The shift to a distributor mode will help manage, if not, reduce the high operational costs. And with the same people who ran the Kodak local business for over 10 years going to run Techtrends, we can assure our customers that the same level of service will be carried out,” says Albert who has been with Kodak Philippines for the last 15 years.
Meanwhile, sales of digital cameras remain strong despite, again, the proliferation of camera phones. Albert says they don’t see the entire market going for the all-in-one devices anytime soon, just as they don’t see the end of film in favor of digital cameras.
“There are studies that question whether there can really be a one device (for everything) and the answer is none. At the same time, we know that there are still people who insist and love to use film,” says Albert.
With these considerations, latest retail audits found Kodak in the Top 3 of the digital camera sales in the market. Albert says revenues from Kodak photographic paper and chemistry (chemicals), home printers and disposable cameras and batteries also remain positive.
On the average, people buy a new camera at least every two years or more, which is much longer than that for mobile phone upgrades. The basis for camera upgrades is always the desire to get more megapixels. Albert says a six-megapixel resolution is starting to become the new acceptable standard.
“All you need is up to four megapixels to have a good quality 8x10 photo. Many, however, probably want to have quality that comes close to what a film would offer so they want higher megapixels. But more megapixels mean more memory or storage which makes a camera more expensive,” he adds.
Currently the cheapest-selling Kodak digital camera is the five-megapixel C530 for P5,995 while the most expensive model would be the 10-megapixel V10O3 for P19,995. These are available in any of the 400 Kodak Express outlets nationwide.
Former Kodak South Asia regional manager Timmy Jayme will serve as the marketing communications and Kodak Express channels manager.
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