The photo prints market continues to make up the lion’s share of revenues within the European photo industry, last year generating revenues at retail that were 130% the size of the photobook and photo-merchandise markets combined, according to the latest research from Futuresource Consulting.
However, it’s not all good news. The photo prints market – film and digital combined – fell by 9% in volume in 2013 to 10.5 billion prints and is expected to fall another 9% to 9.6 billion prints in 2014. However, it will still outweigh the combined value of the photobook and photo-merchandise markets.
“The photo prints market continues to be impacted negatively by digital content sharing, particularly social networking, smartphones and tablet PCs,” says Jeremy Wills, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. “However, there is a positive impact from the growing number of images captured daily by smartphones, and the emergence of photo printing apps within social networking and image sharing platforms. Wi-Fi connection from smartphones to instant print kiosks – which is currently being rolled out at several retailers – is also likely to have a positive impact.”
Product Channels
The instant photo-print channel will continue to grow in importance, from 14% of the market in 2013 to 21% in 2018. Nevertheless, overall instant print volumes peaked in 2011, were flat in 2012 and 2013 and are set to decline by 1% in 2014.
The retail over-the-counter channel remains the largest print pathway in Europe (42% of total orders in 2013), but is also experiencing the greatest decline in volume terms, falling by around 14% in 2013. Futuresource forecasts indicate a further 13.5% decline from 2013 to 2014.
“Looking ahead, we expect to see instant photo prints prices continue to fall, retail over-the-counter prices to increase marginally and home, online mail order and online pick-up-in-store prices to remain flat,” says Wills.
“In terms of industry rationalisation and consolidation, the two major changes in the photo-prints sector in 2013 and 2014 have been Snapfish pulling out of the markets in Benelux and Spain in early Q2 2013, and Erikuva in Finland being acquired by Ifolor in Q1 2014.”