One-Hour Photo Books a big hit during Holiday season
The photo industry has been praising photo books for more than a year as the hot holiday product. According to Lucidiom, OEM and independent retail clients around the globe, Lucidiom Inc.”More than 100,000 one-hour bound calendars and more than one million one-hour folded greeting cards were printed in November and December 2007. The EQ-9800 gave retailers three top sellers for the holidays.”
“In fact, while one-hour photo books gave retailers a new hit product this past holiday season, even more bound calendars and folded greeting cards – all done within an hour on the EQ-9800 – were made by photofinishing retailers,” add Giordano.
Too late: Photo frame manufacturers miss hoiday season
According to Digitimes, a number of leading Taiwan-based digital photo frame makers missed their shipment targets this holiday season. Market watchers predicted the year 2007 would be a great year for the photo frame business, leading makers such as Lead Data, Action Electronics, Quanta Storage or Wireless Mobility will not be able to meet their shipment targets this year due to shortages of small- to medium-size LCD panels, according to market sources. Read more
Microsoft: Redmond buys Photo Sharing Service WebFives
As always, Microsoft is very late to the game. Maybe it’s a part of their strategy: wait until Google (Picasa Web Albums) and Yahoo (Flickr) establish solid market positions, and then develop or buy an (usually inferior) product of their own and try to corner those remaining 10% of users. This time, they’ve acquired WebFives (previously Vizrea), a photo/video/audio sharing site primarily aimed at mobiles, specifically Nokia devices. In typical Microsoft fashion, they’re promptly shutting down the service (current users have 30 days to download their content) which will probably reemerge later as a Microsoft branded product.
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DSLR Boom: Canon reports record sales in first half of 2007
Canon Inc. has just announced its second quarter and first half financial results for 2007, reporting a 9.5 percent increase in sales over last year’s second quarter, from 1.028 trillion yen (approx. $8.72 billion USD) to 1.127 trillion yen (approx. $9.56 billion). First-half sales climbed 11 percent to 2.17 trillion yen, compared to 1.95 trillion yen for the first half of 2006.
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Nikon: 40 million SLR lenses sold worldwide
Nikon just announced that its digital camera performance and overall profits rose this quarter year over year. In a three-month period ending June 30, Nikon shipped twice as many SLRs than this time last year, increasing from 360,000 to 760,000 this quarter. Shipments of compact cameras rose 22 percent, growing from 1.67 to 2.03 million units. Nikon also announced it has reached the 40 million unit mark for SLR lenses sold worldwide. Read more
DSLR sales boost Photo business: Digital camera sales double
Digital camera shipments rose 118 per cent in the first half of 2007, according to a new report from the Japan-based Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA), which represents firms responsible for approximately 80 per cent of global sales. CIPA reported a total of slightly more than 164 million cameras shipped during the six months from January to June. Growth in shipments of more expensive digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras was particularly strong, reaching 145.5 per cent. Read more
Temple of Zoom: Interesting Panasonic Lumix Marketing Game
Earn discount on Panasonic Lumix cameras by just playing a game. Play the Temple of Zoom until level 10 and you receive a 10% discount voucher for your next Camera purchase. Win all levels and earn a 15% discount. One must be a UK resident to avail the gadget promo. The game is simple. Guide Mr Stickman all throughout the pixelated maze using your cursor keys and spacebar. Find the wide-angle icon to literally widen the game space and find the shutter to forward to the next level. Watch out for the red hot lava. I actually played the Temple of Zoom all the way to level ten. Guess what? I got a 10% virtual voucher delivered Read more
Cell phone photo boom: One billion Mobile Camera phones in use
According to a study by Strategy Analytics Ltd. the wordwide number of mobile camera phones in use will top one billion this year, reflecting their tremendous growth rate since the first Mobile camera phones hit the market in early 200o. As the British researchers found out, mobile camera phone sales shot up from about three million camera phones in 2001 to 500 million in 2006 - a pretty impressive growth rate within five years. However, the reaserch group evaluating the data strongly believe the growth will start to level off now. (SK)
Casio Exilim optimzed for eBay fans
Japanese CE giant Casio introduced a digital camera line specifically targeted at people that sell items on eBay. Now four camera models out of the popular Casio Exilim line feature the so-called ‘Bay Best Shot’ mode and are optimized for item photographs used in eBay listings. According to Casio representatives at the eBay Live 2007 conference in Boston, the EX-V7, the EX-S770, the EX-Z1050 as well as the EX-Z75 include the special eBay shot mode for optimized pics for online auctions. Read more
