Photographers may soon be picking up prints with their coffee… or during a trip to the movies September 9, 2015

[Photo credit: Callum McInerney-Riley]

As many as two trillion images will be shared over the internet in 2015, according to Benedict Evans, an analyst at US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

However, UK smartphone users have lost around 12 billion images by failing to print them out, back them up or transfer them to social media, according to Kodak Alaris, which operates 100,000 photo-printing kiosks worldwide.

Currently, Kodak’s smartphone app, Kodak Moments, allows prints to be delivered at home or sent for collection at 150 UK outlets, mainly Kodak Express stores. Prints can be made from a kiosk in-store by wirelessly transferring images from a mobile phone, using Wi-Fi.

But we may soon see photo-printing machines appearing elsewhere on the high street, as kiosk operators look to tap into the huge number of images carried on our smartphones.

‘At the moment, most printing solutions in retail are drug chains and mass grocery chains… similar places to traditional [film] photography…’ Lee Palmer, European vice-president of Kodak Alaris’s imaging division, told journalists yesterday.

Palmer said potential locations include coffee houses and cinemas.

In a later interview with Amateur Photographer, Palmer added: ‘Obviously, now the fact that we carry our phones around with us all the time means we have our content on us all the time.

‘So, we are always looking at potential places – whether that be mobile phone operator stores or coffee houses or events or wherever…

‘We are always actively testing and trialling other areas to see if it makes sense…

‘We are absolutely prepared to talk to these companies and are.’

Palmer said a smaller, portable version of the Kodak kiosk could be used in such locations.

Kodak Alaris, which operates 35,000 kiosks across Europe, says potential locations include coffee houses and mobile phone stores, though it hasn’t named companies it is talking to

[Photo credit: Callum McInerney-Riley]