Digi Frames Continue Roll

Digi Frames Continue Roll

987

The digital frame market continued its remarkable evolution at both the recently concluded CES and PMA shows as a multitude of new models debuted offering everything from wireless uploads to the ability to print 4×6-inch photos. The category got off to a slow part when initial models hit the market at the turn of the century as both high prices and complicated operation slowed sales.

Apparently that was then and this is now as PMA’s recent 2008 U.S. Digital Imaging Survey claims 11 percent of all U.S. households own a digital photo frame today – roughly double the number of households owning a digital frame in 2006.

The fact that many consumers have yet to address an effective way to properly store and organize their digital image files and are instead letting them pile up on their computer hard drives has certainly helped this category’s recent surge. The product is getting millions of images out of the “black hole” of a PC’s drive and back into consumer’s lives to enjoy. While many in the industry originally claimed this product would ultimately hurt the retail print business, several are now claiming otherwise.

“Images that are stored on a PC’s hard drive will rarely if ever get printed,” began retail analysts Lauren Sosik. “While images presented on a digital frame are seem by family and friends and are often times printed as a result of someone simply asking ‘hey, I like that image, can I get that printed?’.”

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, the category should enjoy another big boost as the numbers for that holiday in 2007 were astonishing. The NPD Group reported that the category did over $12 million is U.S. sales for Mother’s Day week with over 112,000 units sold. The figures actually bested the numbers generated during the 2006 holiday selling season for the category.

NO COMMENTS