Xerox global marketing manager for office products, solutions, and competition, Siddhartha Bhattacharya, recently discussed with CRN eight different trends affecting the printers, copiers, and MFP market, including the black-and-white printer market, digitization, and BYOD. Although the market for these products is facing declines, the executive indicated that opportunities remain for solution providers.
The trends include:
- Market Maturity – the printer market is only expected to grow at a 2.6% CAGR through 2018, according to InfoTrends, a trend that is especially relevant to the low end of the office segment.
- Decline in Single-Function Printers – compared with the overall printing market, the single-function printer market is declining, as users increasingly prefer machines that can also perform copying, scanning, or faxing functions.
- Black & White Shipments Remain Strong – while color printers are becoming increasingly popular, black-and-white devices continue to comprise 75% of shipments, a proportion that is only expected to drop to 70% by 2018.
- Migration from A3 to A4 – there is a trend demonstrating a shift from A3 MFPs to A4 devices, which have comparable functionality as higher-end A3 units, and offer smaller footprints, and lower acquisition costs.
- MFPs as ‘Document Hubs’ – scanning speeds will become increasingly important, and MFPs will need to become document hubs to remain relevant in the industry.
- Application and Cloud Connectivity Growth – with the rise in cloud connectivity, MFP vendors will need to focus on cloud connection solutions and repositories, and find ways to monetize those opportunities
- Rise in Mobile Printing – especially with the rising adoption of BYOD, opportunity will come from solutions that enable mobile workers to print from multiple apps across multiple devices.
- Evolution of MPS – managed workflow services will be the next phase in the evolution of MPS. Managed workflow services will focus on managing a company’s specific printing workflows. Currently, basic print services is about twice the size of managed print services.
