Coming soon to a chain store near you … self-service Hewlett-Packard Photo Kiosks! HP bills their new Photosmart Express station as “the most advanced standalone, self-service photo kiosk dedicated to producing 4 x 6-inch prints quickly.” Welcome to a market filled with cannibals, as aggressive online photo printers battle the discount chains …

HP clearly hopes that the new kiosks will turn the company into a formidable presence in the in-store photo-printing market. But they may face a quality/perception hurdle. These aren’t your mother’s drugstore photo prints. Unlike most in-store print systems, the new HP kiosk is inkjet-based, rather than photochemical-based.

While HP claims that the inkjet prints “will resist fading for well over 50 years – two to 10 times as long as typical dye-sublimation-based retail systems,” a similar comparison is not made with traditional photochemical prints.

In order to succeed, HP must be aggressive with per-print pricing, once the quality hurdle is cleared. After all, HP’s own Snapfish offers prints for 12 cents a piece online and 19 cents a piece when printed through their relationship with Walgreens.

How much lower are they prepared to go in the bricks and mortar world?

Related: Compare Photo Print Prices