Statistics of Photoforum - 2005

The Moscow Photoforum is the leading technological trade fair in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern Europe. It is one of the major events for the world photographic industry that determines its development trends for the coming year. The world- known companies of the photographic market have demonstrated the latest gains in  professional and consumer photo- and video, photo printing equipment and materials, digital media technologies and photo finishing, built-in digital devices. This year Photoforum exposition occupied 6 pavilions with the total area of 19,000 sq.m.

Exhibitors
Over 250 companies, including all leading manufacturers of photographic equipment and accessories, Russian distributors and dealers exhibited at Photoforum-2005. Among them: Kodak, Canon, Konica Minolta, Nikon, Fujifilm, Sony, AgfaPhoto, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Noritsu, Casio, Samsung, Panasonic, Pentax, Mitsubishi Electric, Rekam, Polaroid, Hi-Touch Imaging, “Techsoyuz”, “Sivma”, “L-Photo”, “Royal-Photo”, “Adlum”, “Loma”, “Avras”, “Converse”, “Vela”, “City Trade”, “Instant”, “Grafitec”, “Center for Professional Photographic Equipment”, “Russcom” “Reinvest”, Topservice” and many others. Over 430 world-famous brands were represented at the fair. 

Visitors
Due to the photographic technologies rapid development in Russia the number of the exhibition attendants increases annually. This year the number of visitors was 65 100 including 30 900 specialists. Photoforum unite  amateur photographers as well as professional ones: owners of photo and video equipment stores, photo studios, specialists of photographic industry enterprises, representatives of advertising agencies, printing companies, designers and many others.

Visitors’ business activity	Categories
Services- 27,7%	Photo equipment- 37,1%
Retail sale - 22,7%	Design - 16%
Professional photographer - 15,5%	Poligraphic industry  - 12,2%
Wholesale - 11,3%	Computers - 11,9%
Manufacturing company - 7,5%	Video equipment - 9,2%
Advertising agency - 6,8%	Other - 13,6%
Mass media- 3,5%
Museum/archive-1,5%
Other - 3,5%

Visitors’ geography	Visitors’ geography of CIS countries
Russia – 56%	Ukraine - 42%
Moscow – 35%	Belorus – 30,5%
CIS – 6%	Central Asia countries and Caucauses - 17%
Foreign countries - 3%	Baltic states - 6,5%
	Moldova - 4%

Seminars
Particular interest for professional photographers was the Photoforum program of seminars that gave a unique opportunity to talk to and to learn from the best world-famous photo experts. Master-classes within the exhibition were held by Katrin Eismann – the author of the world best-sellers in the field of portrait retouching in Photoshop, and Urs Recher - the consulting photographer of the Swiss company Bron Elektronik.

Round-table discussion
For the first time the Photoforum press-conference format was changed. The most acute issues of the photographic industry today were covered at the round-table discussion. The participants of the discussion were heads of representative offices and top-executives of the major companies: KONICA MINOLTA, CANON, KODAK, SONY, HP, SAMSUNG Techwin, EPSON, REKAM, CASIO and also heads of one of the leading trade company Techsoyuz  and the chain of professional photolabs PhotoPro. Summing it all up we can say that the Russian photographic market is one of the most promising and rapidly developing in the world. It’s yet far from the satiety period, that’s why the leading players of the market are now aimed at active promotion of new digital technologies in the regions. Moreover, the price-quality relationship is currently in the best balance for consumers: the price is getting lower and the quality is getting better.
Due to the opinion of the round-table discussion participants, in future the market will have technological competition in the following trends: design, digital quality, size, number of features and reliability. Printing from digital carriers has also great potential. The users will be offered advanced devices for scanning, home photo-printing, digital photo-labs and photo-kiosks. During the discussion the most significant mission was set – to inform the user that home and digital printing is easy-to-use and affordable.
Development of mobile phones with integrated digital camera was a special issue of the discussion: is it a real menace to the market of digital compact cameras? Contrary to the expectations all the discussion participants agreed that the camera-phones market is a new, very large, potential audience of amateur photographers. Today markets of photo cameras and camera-phones don’t depend on each other but at the same time they complement each other.

Mobile Imaging Show
For the first time within Photoforum exhibition Mobile Imaging Show was carried out. The event was devoted to mobile phones with integrated photo cameras. Visitors became participants of the grand show – fashion show of swimming clothes represented by famous professional models. The show was being shot by Juri Jeludev, famous Russian photographer, who took real-time pictures with a camera-phone. Besides, any visitor had an opportunity to take pictures of the fashion-models by his mobile phone and to print them at once with photo-kiosks and compact home photo printers, there was also a chance to take part in prizewinning lottery and quizzes.

“Product of the Year” Award
The “Product of the Year” award ceremony was held on April 14, 2005 in “Renaissance” Hotel. The members of the independent jury, representatives of 11 popular trade magazines and newspapers, announced the competition results according to 28 nominations. The winners were awarded with prizes and diplomas.