Worldwide hardcopy peripherals (HCP) shipment value increased 3,5% year-over-year to $14,9-billion in the third quarter of 2014 (3Q14) while unit shipments declined -2,3% year-over-year to 27,5-million units during the same period, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) worldwide Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker.
Some notable accomplishments in the third quarter include:
* Western Europe, one of the biggest regions in terms of HCP shipments, enjoyed its sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth. The main driver for growth in the region was color MuFP products. Inkjet markets continued to show year-on-year increases but demand in consumer markets weakened, while the growth patterns for business inkjets were again strong.
* Two of the top five vendors (Epson and Samsung) enjoyed positive year-over-year growth. Most of Epson’s growth came from developing regions, while Samsung extended its gains into developed regions like the US and Western Europe.
* Ricoh continued to gain momentum in the laser space, recording continuous year-over-year growth in unit shipments since the first quarter of 2010.
“IDC expects solutions, services, and workflows will be the main growth areas for the printing industry going forward. Nevertheless, there is still ample opportunity to make equipment sales within the traditional printing market as well as in adjacent markets,” says Phuong Hang, program director: Worldwide Hardcopy Peripheral Trackers at IDC.
Inkjet still makes up the majority of the market, but the best market growth is in laser. Colour laser shipments grew 4,6% in 3Q14 to nearly 2-million units.
The single function printer market declined -6,2% year-over-year in the third quarter, while multifunction peripheral (MFP) shipments had flat growth. However, MFPs had a strong performance in all color laser speed ranges, especially in 31-44ppm, growing 19,2% year-over-year.
Colour increased 1% from a year ago to 19,3% share versus its monochrome counterparts, which lost one point to account for 80,7% share in 3Q14. Colour’s year-over-year growth was 4,6% while mono laser declined -2,2%. The strongest colour speed segment was the 1-10 ppm (23,1%), where Samsung did particularly well with the SL-C460 model family.
The 45-69ppm monochrome laser MFP segment exhibited the strongest year-over-year growth in 3Q14 at 19,5%, followed by 70-90ppm (9,9%) and 31-44ppm (9,1%). The 45-69ppm segment’s strong growth was fueled by Xerox’s WorkCentre 3615DN. In the color market, the 31-44ppm MFP segment did well at 19,2% year-over-year growth, followed by 45-69ppm at 13,6% and 70-90ppm at 11,2%.
The A3/A4 battle in the mid-speed market segments continues. A4 MFP devices gained penetration in the 31-69ppm monochrome segment with 77,7% share of the total monochrome A4/A3 MFP market in the same speed segment.
The 16,8% year-over-year growth of the A4 31-69ppm MFP monochrome laser segment was driven by strong year-over-year results in the both A4 31-44ppm(12,2% growth) and A4 45-69ppm MFP segment (46,9% growth) with significant contributions from Kyocera Document Solutions (43,2%), Lexmark (16,1%), and HP (14,1%).
