Digital Home Thoughts: Digital Shutterbugs Focus on Retail Prints

"A new study of digital camera owners' photography habits from IDC has found that the average number of images taken by digital photographers has continued to increase: users are expected to take an additional 18 images a month in 2005, while the average number of monthly prints is expected to increase 29 percent during the year. However, the study also found that users' printing behavior is changing with the increased volume of prints, with home printing declining in favor of having photos printed by retail and commercial services... also found a great deal of variability in digital photographer's printing habits with one-third of respondents reporting they never print images and over 10 percent saying they print every image that they decide to keep. That could be a lot of printing: 15 percent of respondents claim they never delete any images!"

Very interesting. I clearly fall into the category of people that never print any images. I also like to keep all my images, though I will obviously delete most of the bad shots that I end up taking, i.e. things with high motion blur and the like. Anyways, this study surprises me because I was wrong on two counts - I thought that the amount of printing of photographs was reducing and secondly I was under the impression that there was a growing number of people that were printing photos at home. I wonder what printer manufacturers can do to try and reverse the trend.