Kodak and The Carphone Warehouse click on a deal
Companies join together to enable camera phone
users to produce high-quality prints in just 25 seconds
13 June 2003
Kodak today
announced The Carphone
Warehouse has agreed to purchase 50 Kodak Order Stations for
stores across the UK, France and Spain – the first deal
of its type anywhere in Europe using this ground-breaking technology.
The deal will allow The Carphone Warehouse customers’ to
produce Kodak Pictures from their phone cameras. The first unit
has already been installed in The Carphone Warehouse’s flagship
Oxford Street store and, following the success of this trial,
the installation of the remaining units will follow by September
2003.
Kodak’s Order Stations allow users to produce
Kodak Pictures from the images they capture with their phones.
The images can be quickly uploaded by infra-red or Bluetooth connection
and then viewed on the Kodak Order Station with an easy-to-use
touch screen, enabling users to make simple changes.
Once the customer has edited the images, they can be printed
in around 25 seconds each on Kodak paper that will last for generations.
Customers can choose from a variety of formats, from two up to
nine images on each 6” x 4” print.
“Our research suggests that by 2006, there will be a staggering
100 million phone cameras in circulation in Europe,” said
Hal Duffin, Director and General Manager, Consumer Imaging, UK
& Ireland, Kodak Limited. “We believe people will use
them more often and in more informal ways which means literally
billions of images will be generated. Our revolutionary order
stations mean users can now get high quality prints from these
phone cameras – the first time this service has been made
available in Europe.”
The Kodak Order Station is not only capable of receiving downloads
and using image files generated by camera-enabled mobile phones,
but it also accepts input from a broad range of memory cards used
by digital cameras, as well as Picture CDs and CD ROMs. It means
the Kodak Order Stations can be used not only by camera-phone
users but also digital camera users.
“Two thirds of contract handsets we now sell are camera-enabled,”
said Charles Dunstone, chairman of The Carphone Warehouse plc.
“The roll-out of the Kodak Order Stations will give our
camera phone customers the most flexibility and another unique
service, allowing them to print photo-quality pictures quickly.”
“The Carphone Warehouse was built by offering our customers
great quality, technically-advanced products that meet their individual
needs. The camera-enabled phone market is in its infancy but already
we can see demand accelerating rapidly. The partnership we have
created with Kodak means The Carphone Warehouse can stay at the
leading edge of Europe’s mobile phone market by ensuring
customers can turn their images into high-quality pictures.”
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