Digital photo frame: rapidly developing products
2008-07-31

A Digital Photo Frame is a consumer electronics good. It satisfies the need of displaying digital photos and also music and videos at home. Now, many people have already owned digital cameras, however, just a few persons plan to print the photos. Lots of people just store the photos on their computer. But, to store the photos on the computer is really complicated for a big part of digital camera users. To address this problem, the digital photo frame is a simple device, where the pictures can be displayed without much knowledge about computers.

Digital photo frame products surfaced briefly during 1999 to 2001 and created significant market quickly , but ,what a pity, It didn’t be the meaningful sale. Later, two out of the six manufacturers, Digi-Frame and Weave Innovations, went out of business; Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Kodak exited the market and changed focus.

Since then, large numbers of companies appeared in the market. Royal Philips launched its digital photo frame products in summer of 2005 in Europe, and the America. Subsequently, POLAROID entered the digital photo frame market in the end of 2006 aiming at the busy Christmas shopping season. At last, the leading brand of digital imaging, Kodak, launched the product line of global again in 2007 and intensified the competition to a new stage.

In 2006, the worldwide sales of the digital photo frame products raised speedily: in the first half o 2006, the sale volume increased steadily over 25 percent, but, during the second half of 2006, especially the end of the year, sales skyrocketed to a record level, with most vendors reporting triple digit unit growth on a semi-annual basis. In a roundabout way, 2006 was a turning point year for the digital photo frame market.

Recently, the industry sources said that the global digital photo frame market has been heating up and attracting more and more big international brands to jump onto the bandwagon.And recent reports show that, digital photo frame industry players are conservative about global shipments this year due to a slowing economy in the US. The global forecast for this year has been adjusted from 18-20 million units at the beginning of the year to about 15 million units, based on company estimates, the market sources added.

1. The European market The European market for digital photo frames was spearheaded by Philips, a global consumer electronic brand with a particularly strong influence in Europe. Total sales volume in Europe increased nearly as much as in the U.S. And in European, consumers usually used the digital photo frames as a unique gift. Many people began to looking for new and unique things as presents as the mobile phone, MP3 player are pervasive.

2. The India market IDLDPL (India Digital Life Style Distributors Pvt. Ltd.) has announced a new digital photo frame called the YES DPF900. The device supports high-contrast color on a 9-inch LCD screen. It allows for direct input from most digital cameras and memory cards, and special features to enhance photo quality. It can also be used with a PC. Other features include an MP3 and MPEG4 player. Deepakraj Singh, Retail Chain Manager at IDLDPL said, "YES's DPF900 satisfies all the parameters regarding quality, durability, portability, packaging and price.

3. The Taiwan market The Taiwan digital photo frame industry has begun growing rapidly as leading international vendors and distributors started to outsource some production to Taiwanese ODM/OEM providers for strengthening of the Taiwanese digital photo frame manufacturing industry's supply chain. Higher volumes and lower prices have stimulated further growth in market demand. Innovative concepts that stress convenient photo sharing and the easily use have attracted imitators. Meanwhile, both branded vendors and distributors have been working optimistically to develop niche markets, helping to stimulate further growth in digital photo frame market size. For example, in order to seize market share in the digital photo frame market in Taiwan, international vendors, like Sony, Samsung Electronics, and View Sonic, are introducing new products at this time, according to the market sources. Samsung Electronics Taiwan announced that the company will introduce digital photo frames according to its evaluation of Taiwan consuming habits, with the currently launch schedule being for the third quarter of 2008.

4. Domestic market In 2006, manufacturers in china, especially of Shenzhen, headed into this field. In 2007, the digital photo frame market finally started up worldwide. Because of the consumer habits and price factors, China's digital photo frame market is still in the embryonic period. However, as one of the most important production bases for consumer electronics in the world, China accounted for a majority share in the world's total output of digital photo frames, which fueled the fast growth of demand. On the other hand, the users of digital photo frame in china are increasingly fast. Before 2006, the made in China digital photo frames are almost export to other countries. At the end of 2006, Royal Philips launched the digital photo frames to Chinese consumers first. And from then on, the sale volumes skyrocketed to a new scale. In 2006, the sale volume reached 97000, over 470.6 percent to 2005. And AIGO has the largest sales volume in China’s digital photo frame, Next are Samsung and View Sonic.

According to the IDC's special study, the global sales revenue of digital photo frame will grow to 42.3 million units by 2011