Agfa Press Release 19/03/04

Cologne/Hannover, March 2004 (Hall 1, Stand 4C)

Well Positioned for Photos from all Media

“Digital” prints are growing twice as fast as digital cameras

Digital photography is booming. The sales of digital cameras in Germany, around 4.8 million units in 2003, have doubled in one year. And there is no doubt that the success story of digital photography will continue. Camera-phones will bring a new impetus to the market: an estimated 30% of mobile phones in Germany are equipped with a camera, while the figure for Japan has already reached 90%.

Agfa-Gevaert, the leading European photographic company, is confident of its strong position in the world of digital imaging - even though Agfa sells neither digital cameras nor camera-phones.

The reason why? Agfa is a leading supplier of professional systems for printing images onto photographic paper. And the number of digital images captured on photographic paper is currently growing more than twice as fast as the sales of the digital cameras themselves.

The days when digital photography was mainly for computer freaks are over. Digital photography has come to the mass market - to the great mass of consumers who not only wish to save their images as digital files, but also to hold real photos in their hands and maybe stick them in an album too. This is not just the easiest way to look at photos and keep them, but also the safest way: in view of the rapid development of information technology, who knows whether suitable software and hardware will be available in 20 or even 50 years to view images stored using today’s technology such as CD-ROMs?

Digital photographers take on average at least three times as many shots as photographers using film. In the medium term it is expected that around 25 per cent of all digital images will be printed on photographic paper. And the boom in digital cameras means a rise in the total number of cameras in use, so that the number of prints on paper will at the very least remain stable, even without taking camera phones into account. In practice, however, prints are increasingly being made from camera phones. The production of prints from digital sources is therefore becoming an attractive growth market, a market well able to hold its own against home printing. A print produced using professional lab equipment has considerable quality advantages, and costs about 70 per cent less than a print made at home on a PC printer.

Photo retailers and photo-finishers who want to profit from this growth market should not neglect their traditional business, however. Today in Germany there are still around three times as many classic film cameras in use as digital cameras.

There is therefore a strong demand for lab equipment which can process both films and digital images and either produce colour prints from them or save them on CD-ROM in professional quality, or do both. The new digital minilab “Agfa d-lab.1”, a focus of Agfa’s presentation at CeBIT 2004, is an all-round talent of this type. This compact-sized minilab, equipped with unique MDDM printing technology and highly sophisticated image improvement software (Agfa d-TFS), produces top-quality professional prints at an extremely competitive cost.

But how do the images find their way to the lab? There are many ways, and at CeBIT Agfa is demonstrating the two most important. Firstly the “Agfa image box”, placed at the retail point of sale with a direct connection to the minilab. Just insert the camera storage medium or a CD-ROM into the Agfa image box, and the minilab can make the prints. The Agfa image box is also equipped with a bluetooth/infrared interface for images from camera phones. Customers who want instant prints can have them produced using the integrated thermosublimation printer.

Customers who prefer not to make the trip to a store will opt for print orders from the “AGFAnet Print Service”. Here prints can be ordered via internet (www.agfanet.com) from a home PC. The customer is not tied to any one photo lab, but can choose a preferred supplier from a wide range of Agfa partner labs - because the AGFAnet Print Service is a platform for all photo retailers who make high-quality prints on Agfa paper using Agfa equipment.