With feverish demand for digital cameras fueling growth in the photography industry, manufacturers hope to persuade consumers that printing pictures is just as important as snapping them.
Printing of digital photos, whether done at home or at a local drugstore, greases the industry"s revenue machine, according to players attending the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) conference in Las Vegas this week.
"The issue for the industry is that while people are taking a lot of digital images, if we can"t get them to print and share those images, we have lost a tremendous growth opportunity," Martin Coyne, photography group executive vice president at Eastman Kodak Co.(NYSE:EK - news), told Reuters.
PMA expects sales of digital cameras will overtake traditional camera sales in 2003, after digital cameras spurred a rise in U.S. camera sales to 23.7 million units in 2002, after declining in 2001.