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Kodak Optimistic About Image Market in China
Li Junsheng, General Manager of the Kodak Consumer Imaging in China and his colleagues showed their optimism in Chinese image market and confidence in expanding the company's business after China's entry into the WTO when addressing the 2001 News Briefing of Kodak Carnival on January 10.
As to the "Easy Boss" plan unveiled by Kodak this year, Li said that the company carried out the Individual Supporting Loan Plan jointly with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Shanghai Branch last year, providing people who were investing in photo finishing business with an effective financial support.
In the past seven years, China's image market has seen an annual growth rate of eight percent with every day having three Kodak chain stores enter into business.
In developed countries like the United States and Japan, each person consumes 3.6 rolls of film annually in average and 75 percent of the people have their own cameras. However, they only showed a respective 0.1 and 15 percent in China.
With the advancement of Chinese economy, photography will get popularized among Chinese families. Moreover, with the rapid development of on-line image transfer and popularization of digital cameras, it can be anticipated that there'll be a great demand for digital image services such as file printing, individualized photos, photo decoration, etc.
Therefore, there still remains an enormous opportunity and much room for the development of business in the traditional and digital image markets in China.
Presently, China is the second largest film market of Kodak, and is expected to rise to the top within 10 years and in the coming five years, the turnover of digital image of Kodak will reach US$7-10 billion in the world.
Li noted the fact that the digital camera is getting more and more popular in China and in the past three years the annual sales doubled from year to year. According to a survey, the world output of digital cameras in the fourth quarter of 1999 was 1.16 million, a rise of 176 percent over the previous year. Kodak has planned to expand its digital products and other multiple businesses together with the operators joining in Kodak express photo stores to develop on the basis of former stores new-generation stores for the amelioration of life and entertainment.
At present, Kodak is the only authorized foreign enterprise of image products in China. It has more than 5,500 express photo-finishing chain stores in 250 cities all over China with more than 1.2-billion-yuan investment in plant building.
By PD Online staff member Deng Gang
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