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Kodak in cut-price move on digital photo |
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Written by Bisnis Foto
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By Paul Taylor in New York
Updated: 8:40 a.m. ET Feb. 6, 2007
Eastman Kodak, the US-based photography group, is launching an assault on the home digital photo printing market Tuesday with a family of inkjet printers, inks and paper designed to cut the cost of producing a standard postcard-sized print by 50 per cent to about 10 cents.
Kodak claims proprietary technology built into the three new all-in-one inkjet printers will make them simple to use and enable them to deliver low-cost, high-quality prints that rival those produced by a professional photo lab.
The move marks an important bid by Kodak to reassert its position in the consumer photography market where it has lost out to rivals such as Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark and Canon as consumers have switched from traditional film photography to printing digital images at home, mainly using ink-jet printers.
Although Kodak sells a number of specialist printers including a range of small models using dye-sublimation technology, it has lacked models targeting the mainstream inkjet printer market – a market where competitors have typically subsidised hardware costs with high-priced ink and paper "consumables".
However Kodak executives believe the high price of ink supplies in particular have discouraged consumers from printing many of the digital images they take on their digital cameras and camera phones. They also believe consumers have been put off by the relatively poor quality and short lifespan of many home produced digital prints. Kodak claims its three new EasyShare all-in-one printers will enable consumers to print, affordably, crisp, sharp documents and Kodak photo lab-quality prints at home using long lasting pigment-based inks that will save consumers up to 50 per cent on their printing costs compared with rival printers.
"After today, the inkjet market will never be the same," said Antonio Perez, Kodak's chief executive. "We are changing the rules in this industry to ensure that consumers can affordably print what they want, when they want, easily and at the high level of Kodak quality they have come to expect."
The new printers, priced between $149 and $299, will be sold exclusively through Best Buy in the US and will also go on sale in other markets including Europe beginning in May.
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