Printed Photo Product Purchases Still Popular, Says Futuresource Report

Despite the continued surge in photo sharing through social media sites, nearly six in 10 consumers who were canvassed in four countries said they had bought printed photo products in the past 12 months, Futuresource Consulting said Wednesday in a research report. The firm canvassed 4,000 consumers in France, Germany, the U.K. and U.S. to ask how they share digital images and use specific websites and smartphone and tablet apps, it said. It found that 57 percent of those surveyed in the four markets had bought a "personalized photo product," such as photo prints, photo books, calendars, posters or cards, in the past year, it said. Photo prints were the most popular item, having been purchased by 42 percent of the sample, with photo books in second place at 23 percent, it said. However, "when it comes to sharing photos electronically, consumers have now turned to the smartphone as the primary device to share photos with friend and family, taking over from last year's number one device, the laptop screen," it said. "In terms of online photo sharing, email remains a popular platform to share photos and this could be due to the perceived higher level of security/privacy. If this is the case, we can expect this to remain true for the future." When asked which websites or apps consumers use to share photos, Facebook was the most popular choice in all four countries, but Snapchat was the fastest-growing, it said. The firm said smartphones have become the devices most often used to take photos, because smartphone cameras "are constantly improving in terms of lens and resolution, as are the weight and battery life of smartphones themselves, making them far more suitable as substitutes for fixed-lens cameras." That’s in contrast to last year's findings, in which use of fixed-lens cameras for taking pictures was "marginally higher" than smartphones, it said.