Who to Believe?
Sales of printers and multifunction products fell 4.2% in the second quarter to a total of 7.7 million units amid poor sales of photo printers, industry-tracker Gartner Inc. said on Tuesday. Also weighing on unit shipments was a move by many vendors to stop bundling free printers with purchases of computers or digital cameras, the researcher said.
(Originally uploaded by bfraz)
Against this optimistic backdrop, Kinpo Electronics expects a 20% growth this year in the shipments of its photo printers, one of the products that will see significant growth in 2006, according to the company.
The fact is, with services like Snapfish and Shutterfly providing higher quality prints and usually lower costs than home printers, it is increasingly hard to see printing photos at home as anything more than a niche business. You do it on rare occasions when you want your guest to have the photo immediately.
Given that backdrop, we are skeptical of Kinpo’s projections. If they pull it off, we ask that they send us a picture.
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