Now you can take pictures with your mobile phone, Kodak revolutionized recyclable cameras, digital cameras are all the craze and printer manufacturers are even getting in on it -- there's a digital revolution under way!
Kodak, which in 2000 dominated consumer photography, is credited with pioneering the disposable, or recyclable camera, having since outsourced what at one point was thought to be the saving grace of the company in an ever-widening field of competitors in digital cameras who are elbowing in on the photo king's market.
Beginning in 2003 more companies have entered the U.S. market. These include Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo!, Sony, Motorola, Nokia, Cannon, Google, Shutterfly and others. Many are well capitalized and thus, Kodak is suffering financially because of it.
Image capture technology now has two methods: Negative film with image capture by conventional camera, and digital image capture on a computer chip with a digital camera. A third method, based on conventional 35 mm film is the returnable camera. Sales of conventional 35 mm film have declined sharply in the last two years, but the use of returnable cameras is reported to be growing at a rate of about 6 percent per year.
A big question has been, what's happened to the business of printing photographs? Is traditional print dead? Not hardly, says Reno, Nev.-based Itronics, Inc. (OTCBB: ITRO), which processes photochemicals, removing the heavy metals, like silver, and turns the leftover liquids into environmentally friendly fertilizers that it markets under the GOLD'n GRO label.
Image print technology now has two methods: Standard silver halide photographic prints, and ink jet prints. Silver halide prints are less costly to produce compared to ink jet prints, but the ink jet printer companies are making a major push to gain market share using discount pricing. Industry reports indicate that the use of silver halide print paper increased by 7 percent in the first part of 2006 indicating that silver halide prints are still the consumer favorite. And it's waste liquids from silver halide printing that's Itronics' bread and butter.
Internet photo service Shutterfly Inc., whose $75 million IPO is expected shortly, estimates the U.S. market for digital photo prints to grow from $10 billion in 2005 to $30 billion in 2009. In addition, industry sources predict that in the United States photos ordered over the Internet for mail delivery will grow from approximately $424 million in 2005 to approximately $1.9 billion in 2009.
Shutterfly uses conventional silver halide technology to make photographic prints from digital images as well as from 35 mm film. Up until 2005, it supplied its waste photochemicals to Itronics, with the two companies sharing in the profits from extracting pure silver bars from the waste chemicals. But higher transportation costs forced the two to part ways last year. Shutterfly, which is in California, now uses local companies to process the waste liquids -- at least until environmental water quality rules become more stringent there.
While Shutterfly's market booms, so does Itronics. Itronics reported silver sales rose 200 percent in the first two months of the third quarter and that sales of its GOLD'n GRO liquid fertilizers rose 89 percent over the same period last year. Itronics released the interim period results on Sept. 7, the same day Shutterfly's IPO plans were set.
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