Reading the financial pages of our national newspapers, we could wonder if Jessops could be the next high-street retailer to bite the dust following the collapse of Woolworth and administrations of companies such as Zavvi. Only yesterday, for example, The Times wrote the following in its editorial on the financial crisis:

Three types of businesses are vulnerable: first, those that are inefficiently managed, such as Woolworths; second, those that are being overtaken by technology, such as Jessops or photo-processing; third, those, such as textiles, whose relative costs are surely too high for them to be sustainable in Britain much longer. These are businesses that will – and if you believe in creative destruction, should – fail.

The Observer on 04 January also quotes analysts predicting Jessops will, alongside JJB Sports and Clinton Cards, collapse. In a trading statement last year, Jessops had reported a decline in sales. However, it also announced that it had signed an extension of its banking facilities to 31 December 2011, on significantly reduced interest rates.

Analysts might on to something, but let's not forget that too often they see the photography industry as a dead industry, disregarding the fact that photography has become one of the UK's biggest (if not the biggest) hobby.

Talking to BJP, a spokeswoman for Jessops said that the company will release in the next few days its usual Christmas Trading Statement. In the meantime, Jessops won't comment on the speculation.