After meeting with Kodak Alaris last week, we garnered some interesting truths around the state of smartphone photography and what we do with our snaps – some of which might surprise you.
According to Kodak Alaris, us Brits are a clumsy lot when it comes to protecting our photos and over a third of us (35 per cent) admit to losing a smartphone at one time or another. An even greater proportion (44 per cent) say they’ve lost images to broken or corrupt devices too.
With the average user holding just over 650 photos on their device (4 per cent hold over 2500), that’s a lot of potential memories down the toilet (sometimes literally, which works out to be around 1 in 10 unfortunate folk).
The arrival of Google Photos and other emerging cloud storage options has certainly reduced the sense of risk for the average mobile photographer in 2015, but only a relatively small proportion of happy snappers actually use these services. It seems that there’s still an underlying sense of uncertainty (from every 1 in 2) as to whether such technologies will still be accessible ten years down the line.
Naturally Kodak Alaris’ own research also points to one unified conclusion – the best way to hold onto your snaps is to print them out as glossy 6×4”s and for generations photographers have looked to Kodak for such purposes, but the smartphone has changed the skew of who is printing out their photos.
The classic Kodak client was, in the company’s own words ‘the mum’, but the rise of the smartphone photographer has ironed out the gender bias and pushed the age bracket down, with 18 to 24 year-olds new serving as the most likely demographic to print photos in order to keep the associated memories safe.
To meet the growing demand in digital printing Kodak Alaris has reworked its Kodak Moments iOS and Android apps to make it easier for smartphone users to print photos in-store via WiFi direct.
Our hands-on experience with the new app/kiosk combo was pretty seamless and you can specify which photos, the number of prints and the size of the prints you’d like. Kodak Alaris also plans to offer pre-made photo albums and calendars for collection in-store or via home delivery, direct from the app too.
If that all sounds a bit daunting however, Kodak has also, for its sins, become a selfie stick brand.
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