According to a consumer survey conducted by The NPD Group, 85 percent of digital camera owners use e-mail to share digital photos and 88 percent print their photos, whether at home, online or through retailers. Today’s wide variety of digital photo storage and output options is driving consumers to purchase digital cameras. In fact, sales figures from NPD indicate a 26 percent increase in digital camera dollar sales in the past twelve months. U.S. consumers spent $3.76 billion on digital cameras between June ‘02 and May ‘03 compared with $2.99 billion between June ‘01 and May ‘02.

The survey results, released today at the PRO (Photographic Research Organization) Group’s 45th Annual Convention and Trade Show in Portland, Ore., detail the popularity of the digital technology and provide a better understanding of how consumers are using their digital cameras. Some of the key findings are*:

• Twenty-seven percent of consumers post digital images onto personal web sites
• 17 percent use digital images to create greeting cards or invitations
• 18 percent use digital images to sell products online.
• Of the 88 percent of digital camera users who print out photos, 90 percent print them at home, 18 percent bring them to a retailer and 10 percent use an online printing service.
• Over 80 percent of digital camera owners own a 35mm film camera.
  Ninety-two percent of consumers who use a retailer to print their digital photos are most satisfied with their image quality.

* The results above may not add up to 100 percent because respondents were permitted to provide multiple responses to one multiple-choice question.

"These results show how quickly Americans have embraced the digital camera and how interwoven digital technology has become in our lives," said Tom Edwards, senior analyst for The NPD Group. "Digital cameras offer the user immediate results and a wide range of options. The survey results are a clear indication that growth in digital cameras is also fueling growth in other categories including printers, storage media, paper and editing software."

When looking at gender comparisons, use of the digital camera differsvaries greatly between men and women. Women are more likely than men (47 percent vs. 40 percent) to use a digital image as "wallpaper" on their computer. Women (71 percent) are also more likely than men (61 percent) to print their digital images, whether through retail, online or at home. In contrast, 59 percent of men are more likely to add photos to a digital album than women (50 percent). Twenty-four percent of women, compared with 11 percent of men, are using their digital photos to create invitations or greeting cards.

When it comes to storage, seventy-eight percent of those surveyed said they store their images on a computer hard drive. Fifty percent burn images to compact disks, 24 percent store images on memory cards that fit the camera, 6.5 percent use Zip® disks and 4 percent use digital video disks. Just over three percent said they do not store the images.

Methodology
The NPD Group’s digital camera survey was fielded between June 17 and 23, 2003. NPD e-mailed a questionnaire to 920 pre-qualified digital camera owners who are members of NPD’s online consumer panel. The final results, a portion of which are presented here, are based on information from 614 completed surveys.