(keitai-l) keitai image printing (was re: Nokia warns of tough times ahead)

From: Michael Sydenham <michaelsydenham_at_hotmail.com>
Date: 04/20/04
Message-ID: <BAY10-F75DKKnQ5ijVE00015d34@hotmail.com>
Hi

> > you say  few really need a 2.2 meg camera. how many people have their
> > snaps
> > printed these days? according to Kodak not very many.
>
>The problem with Kodak is that they're the "old photography world" and
>haven't adopted that fast to the new world.

They adopted it ok - they were the first to mainstream digital SLR cameras, 
just that in Japan they weren't successful pushing their US-style boxy 
consumer cameras alongside the more attractive Japanese ones - so in the end 
they pulled out of the Japanese market in 2001. But they are coming back to 
Japan with a least one new model (again revisiting the pro market).

>Printing digital photos is growing very fast right now and there are a
>number of small players in all the markets that take advantage of the
>latest hardware to print the images and the possibility to transfer the
>images over the Internet for printing.

As you know it doesn't make a lot of sense to transfer images over the 
mobile internet to print, especially as mega-pixel camera phones become 
popular. So what DoCoMo & AU recently introduced was IrDA in their phone to 
make it possible to print via IR to printers with IR receivers. In the 
beginning it was a service using dedicated terminals at places like 
Yodobashi, but recently Fuji & others brought out dedicated keitai printers 
(via IR) using polariod paper. Epson brought out an after-market SD card 
IR-receiver for one of its popular A4 colour printers. Others (e.g. Canon) 
are starting to get onto the bandwagon too of selling printers that support 
printing from PC & keitai. It is interesting, but I wonder how much demand 
there is for these products, when as observed here possibly many just take 
the picture for the moment & discard it later (or more likely set it as a 
wallpaper).

Michael.

_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. 
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Received on Tue Apr 20 11:42:05 2004