Aug. 16, 2004 Research and Markets has announced the addition of Kiosks and Print Services for Consumer Digital Photography to their offering.

The photofinishing industry and its suppliers are currently engaged in a crucial campaign to provide simple, accessible, and affordable methods for mass market consumers to make prints from their digital camera photos -- before these new users fall into the same "non-printing" behaviors demonstrated by early adopters of digital photography.

A burgeoning population of self-service print Kiosks and other retail fulfillment services aim to provide digital camera users the same near-instant print gratification they are accustomed to with film camera. For Kiosks alone, the recent PMA shootout featured twenty-two different units from thirteen competing vendors.

Despite this broad participation on the supply side, the outcome is hardly an open-and-shut case. Among the key questions today:

- Are these new offerings compelling enough in terms of price, quality and convenience?

- Is the industry moving fast enough to deploy its solutions, and to generate awareness of their existence and benefits?

- Can users who have grown accustomed to the self-printing -or no-printing- model be reclaimed by the photofinishing industry, and what will it take to do so?

- What are users' motivations for producing hard-copy prints, and can they be sustained going forward?

This report benchmarks these issues through a two-pronged approach:

- Vendor interviews regarding the status of their current rollout, their resulting observations, and their intentions going forward.

- User surveys measuring awareness of service-based printing solutions, perception of the value proposition of these solutions, and current and future behaviors.

Vendor research was conducted in the form of a "round-table"-style interview with key executives from the leading suppliers -- both established large players, and startups: Eastman Kodak, Pixology, Pixel Magic, Silverwire, and Sony. Topics covered include Customer Awareness; Installations and Configurations; Print Sizes, Methods, and Prices.

A user survey asks early adopters about the obstacles they've encountered in printing their digital photos, their current printing preferences, and their motivations to print images. The results -- analyzed through over 40 figures and graphs -- identify key obstacles the photofinishing industry must overcome in order to maintain a supplier relationship with the new mass majority of users coming to digital photography.

The report also includes 100 pages of kiosk company spotlights and profiles excepted from recent monthly issues of The Future Image Report featuring interviews with executives from Kodak, Fuji, Pixel Magic Imaging, Sony, Pixology, HP, Phogenix, PhotoAccess, Ofoto, EZ Prints, Bignose/Personalization Station, Epson, Bellamax, Confoti, and MyPublisher; as well as a selection of news stories on photo printers and photofinishing.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c3882