Photo printing seems like a long-forgotten exercise for many and, for others, it’s something that they are too young to have grown up with. For the digital-savvy twenty-something, sharing photos using a smartphone, tablet or app has become a social norm, with an astonishing 1.8 billion photos being uploaded daily globally. At this scale, if consumers were to print just a minimal amount of photos stored on smartphones, tablets, photo sharing platforms and the Cloud, the uplift in the number of printed photo products ordered could be phenomenal.
Consumer photo sharing behaviour has undergone a major revolution over the past 15 years and an increasing number of consumers are sharing their photos via apps from mobile devices, or via image sharing platforms from PCs, laptops and mobile devices.
A new consumer research report from the Print & Imaging team at Futuresource highlights some current consumer photo capture, sharing and printing behaviour in three major Western European markets: France, Germany & the UK. A sample of just over 1,500 consumers who own both a digital camera and a smartphone were interviewed online during late Q2 2015:
- 45% of respondents indicated that their smartphone is their preferred photo capture device
- Smartphones are the most popular way of sharing images, with 35% overall of respondents using them for this purpose. In Germany & the UK, this figure is closer to 40%
- When it comes to ordering photo products, ease of use is the most important criteria when choosing an app to order from a smartphone or tablet
- The number of consumers ordering photo products from smartphones has doubled since this research was last undertaken during 2013.
Senior Print & Imaging Analyst at Futuresource, Jeremy Wills commented, “In the past two years, we’ve seen some totally new photo printing apps coming into the market as well as a growth in the availability of app and HTML-5 ordering platforms from existing photo resellers and retailers.
Wills added, “Many of the sub-30 ‘digital native’ generation live in the moment and have also grown up in an age when it is the norm to share photos digitally, so a photo printing app or platform that offers a quick and easy way to order photo products and/or provides a creative or novelty element can be a catalyst.”