IDC Conference highlights the changing infoimaging landscape

Key take-aways:

• Industry focus on consumer and customer benefits and serving unmet needs, rather than tech prowess, will propel infoimaging growth.

• Leading infoimaging players will exploit their core positions - picture technologies, diagnostic imaging, devices, infrastructure, services and media - to establish leadership positions in the industry.

• Few will have the breadth of technology and customer relationships to pull off an end-to-end play. By developing relationships with other vendors offering complementary imaging solutions, infoimaging participants will enhance their market position.

These findings emerged from a two-day IDC Imaging Convergence Forum held in New York Aug. 6-7. Some 200 attendees, including leading executives, industry analysts, and news media, examined the opportunities and challenges facing the infoimaging marketplace.

"There's no 'one-size-fits-all,'" said Crawford Del Prete, senior vice president of IDC research group. Del Prete - who analyzes IT hardware and communication for IDC - said companies in the segment must remove technological barriers to content enablers, such as digital cameras, online services, and output channels.

"For example, digital cameras need to enable people to do things they don't ordinarily do," he said. "That's what achieves customer bonding with these enabling devices." He observed that some infoimaging solutions - Kodak's organic light emitting display (OLED) technology, and Adobe's Acrobat file-sharing software - have helped achieve "system lock-in."

Identify Intangibles

John Sculley, former Apple Computer CEO and partner, Sculley Brothers LLC, said companies can reach underserved customers by focusing on the intangibles, rather than megapixels. Cellular phones are universal in North America, but few cellular companies focus on serving local markets with voice-optimized systems.

• "Every technology product goes through three phases, from curiosity to useful to indispensable," Sculley said. "Digital cameras today are becoming useful, but they need to get to indispensable."
• "(Infoimaging) manufacturers need to identify the intangibles around digital, and find a different way to conceptualize their businesses."

Build Strategically

David Harding of research firm Bain & Company said that the infoimaging industry would grow to an $768 billion market by 2010, so long as participants build strategically around their core businesses, and avoid value-destroying diversification.

• Harding said the infoimaging marketplace today is reminiscent of the photo industry in the 1920s, as leading companies seek adjacent strategies consistent with their core businesses.
• "We do not have a great definition in infoimaging of what the core businesses will be," he explained. "But the winners will most likely exploit a single core position, (and recognize that) loyalty is a better driver of profitability than acquisition."

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