STATISTICS OF THE SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION
OF CONSUMER AND PROFESSIONAL IMAGING
The 7th international exhibition of consumer and professional imaging PHOTOFORUM-2007 which is the principal event of the Russian photographic industry has been held from April 12 through 15 in Moscow (IEC Crocus Expo). Major companies of the Russian and international photo business (over 350 companies) including Canon, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics, Kodak, Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus, Pentax, Noritsu, Epson, Casio, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric, Rekam and other exhibited the latest developments of the photographic market at this trade show.
Trends
Photo industry today is a perspective field where digital interface has finally established. Further effective development of digital photo equipment depends a lot on high technology which promotes progress in this field. The world key manufacturers continue investing millions in development of advanced technologies and innovations. According to the photo market players, the most popular trends today are miniaturization, variety of functional options, as well as insight of professional technologies in consumer segment. All of the abovementioned, including the latest achievements of the largest manufacturers has been represented at the PHOTOFORUM-2007 exhibition.
Visitors
PHOTOFORUM unites both amateurs and professionals: photographers; owners of photo and video stores, photo service centers; specialists of photographic companies; representatives of advertising agencies, printing companies; designers and many others. The number of the trade show visitors grows every year. In 2007 it made over 85 100 persons including 35 500 – trade visitors.
Trade visitors’ business activity
Services - 24,3%
Wholesale - 19,2%
Retail sale - 18,1%
Professional photographer - 13,2%
Manufacturer - 9,0%
Advertising agency - 7,1%
Mass media - 3,1%
Museum/Archive - 1,0%
Others - 5,0%
Categories
Photographic equipment - 36,1%
Design - 14,1%
Video equipment - 13,6%
Computer hardware - 13,5%
Printing - 12,2%
Others - 10,5%
Trade visitors’ geography
Russia – 58%
Moscow – 33%
CIS – 7%
Foreign countries - 2%
The CIS trade visitors geography
Ukraine – 45%
Belarus – 28%
Central Asia countries and Caucasus - 18%
Baltic States - 6%
Moldova - 3%
Latest projects
ProPhoto Style – 2007 exposition was organized within the PHOTOFORUM exhibition for the first time in view of deepening interest to professional equipment. Here the visitors could see studio lighting equipment, professional photo cameras, image processing equipment and studio accessories. This exposition gave visitors a chance to meet the leading Russian photographers, to attend open master-classes on studio photo shooting, to acquire new skills and knowledge and to choose equipment for personal photo studio.
Educational centre
PHOTOFORUM today – is not only a trade show for technology. It is also an educational centre with a highly topical program of seminars and master-classes. This year the exhibition visitors had an opportunity to learn from such professionals as Dos Winkel – a top-ranked master of underwater photography, Ben Willmore – famous expert in Adobe Photoshop image processing, Igor Sakharov – one of the most popular Russian advertising photographers and Urs Recher – leading photographer-consultant of the Swiss company Bron Elektronik.
Art paradise
The Photosalon “World Photography Stars” has been held within the framework of PHOTOFORUM for the second year. This artistic exposition of the best works made by the world’s photography masters aroused keen interest among visitors who had a chance to admire glory of the nature and monuments of architecture captured by Luis Castaneda, amazing underwater world by Dos Winkel, original city views by David Drebin, colorful fashion-kaleidoscope by Tarun Khival and the best portraits of Russian and foreign musicians by Alexey Lebedinskiy – the leading singer of the “Professor Lebedinskiy” music group.
Round table
One of the key events at PHOTOFORUM-2007 was a Round table discussion dedicated to the burning questions of photo business. The round table participants – representatives of the major manufacturing companies – noted that demand for photo and video cameras steadily increases. The overall market growth made 40% as compared to 2005. Insight of professional technology in consumer segment becomes more and more obvious. Advanced consumers’ rate of interest goes rapidly up.
The new scale
The 12-th international exhibition HDI SHOW-2007 (Hi-Fi, High End audio, home theatre, digital multimedia systems for home entertainment) was held in parallel with PHOTOFORUM for the first time ever. All together over 600 manufacturers and distributors exhibited the largest range of innovations in Hi-Fi and Hi-End, home theater, audio and video, consumer and professional photo and video equipment.
Thus the two largest exhibitions at one fair ground became a grand show of the latest achievements in audio, video and photo industry. This large-scale project has no prototypes in Russia and Eastern Europe. According to the Organizer’s opinion, its new concept will make Russia able to considerably strengthen hand in the world-wide trade fair business, to approximate the scale of the famous CES exhibition in Las-Vegas and thus to become the major event in its segment in Europe
