We spoke to Janis Kemers, vice president print and supplies at TD SYNNEX Europe, about the current state of the print market and its prospects for the future .
Within the broad, rich, and varied landscape of the technology market, print has never really stood out. But it remains an important part of that picture. Print and supplies business continues to bring in good, regular business for the channel. And over the last 16 months, demand for print devices has boomed.
The worldwide ‘hardcopy peripherals (HCP) market’ – as IDC rather grandly calls it – saw overall shipments grow 5.6% year over year to approximately 27 million units in the fourth quarter of 2020. That was mainly driven by demand for low-end devices for use at home and this is a trend that’s continued in 2021.
Higher demand
While those figures are encouraging in one sense, the value of shipments during the quarter actually declined 5.1% to $11.1 billion. Under these circumstances, making the print element of business profitable is a challenge. This is nothing at all new though, as Janis Kemers, vice president print and supplies at TD SYNNEX Europe, reflects.
‘If you look at the long term trend, print has been declining. There are many reasons for that and as a consequence the market become a lot more competitive for everyone.
‘The pandemic changed things as demand went up and it was hard to get hold of printer products – especially lower end devices. Then after that we saw some re-opening of the commercial sector and a return to a more stable demand, but it is still a highly volatile situation in the print market.’
One reason for continued unpredictability is a second wave of demand from home workers, who have realised that they purchased a product that did not really meet their needs in the rush to get set-up for home working. There are two factors here – first of all that the products are not of a sufficient quality or output speed, or don’t have appropriate scanning capability – something a lot of users now need much more when they are working remotely all the time. This has pushed up demand for mid-range multi-function devices.
The European market for refillable ink tank printers hit a new milestone in Q1
The other issue has been the constrained supply and cost of ink cartridges and this, in turn, is leading to a boom in the sales of ink tank printers. This trend was picked up by another channel research firm, CONTEXT, in May, when it reported that the European market for refillable ink tank printers hit a new milestone in Q1, with the year-on-year volume of average number of pages printed (ANP) soaring by 33% to top one billion. (The ANP figure is calculated from ink tank yield weighted by units sold).
Refillable growth
Customers have started to purchase these devices as they cost less to run and are more sustainable and environmentally friendly. They also avoid the need to constantly order a new cartridge – or to stock up on them – every few days or weeks.
While they cost more to buy, the per-page cost is significantly lower over the lifetime of the device. From a seller’s perspective, the profit all comes in the sale, rather than the aftermarket for consumables and from one perspective, that makes it easier for resellers to capture a higher share of the profit overall.
Refillable printers will continue to become more popular, Janis Kemers believes, as organisations look to take a more sustainable approach to IT. However, while sales of refillable printers are increasing, they are still only taking a small percentage of the overall market; Janis Kemers estimates they probably generate about 15% of all sales in Europe at present.
The move to hybrid working and the acceleration in digital transformation that has been triggered by the pandemic is driving buying trends towards smaller, personal, and mid-range devices
Interestingly, in the Far East, the share that refillable devices take is much higher – around 60%. They were introduced into these markets earlier and have risen in popularity quickly, partly due to heavier promotion by the industry as a way of countering runaway counterfeiting of ink cartridges in these markets.
In addition, customers in these markets have recognised and embraced the lower lifetime cost benefit that refillable printers offer. When that happens here, we can perhaps expect a further increase in sales.
Hybrid drive
Looking at the wider market in the UK and Europe right now, the move to hybrid working and the acceleration in digital transformation that has been triggered by the pandemic is driving buying trends towards smaller, personal, and mid-range devices and away from the high-cost, high-functionality, networkable printers and MFDs that would previously have been used as a shared resource in offices.
Janis Kemers now expects the commercial demand to stabilise and remain strong throughout this year and next. Vendors are working now to bring new products forward that appeal directly to this market, so over the next few months we can expect to see a new flurry of launches and promotional activity as vendors look to address this opportunity.
Meeting management challenges
This will see sustained growth in sales of smaller, home-deployed MFPs. These devices will be bought and owned by companies and one of the big challenges for organisations is how to manage them. This is seen as a big area of potential by TD SYNNEX and one it’s addressing with the launch of its OpenMPS platform – see https://uk.tdsynnex.com/openmps/home. This provides a simple way for resellers to monitor their customers’ print devices – whether they are installed in offices or in homes – and provide replacement ink and toner cartridges in advance. It’s simple to get set-up on the platform and enables resellers to provide an automated supply of consumables to customers, ensuring the business always goes through them.
Reseller partners can meet all the needs of end-user customers, for both as-a-service propositions, and for managed print services
For many customers, there may also be another challenge – of actually funding the purchase of all these new devices. There will be a desire from many customers, Janis Kemers believes, to move to an as-a-service model, and here TD SYNNEX’s Tech-as-a-Service proposition is already proving to be popular as a way of providing print devices on an as-a-service basis.
With these two propositions, said Janis Kemers, reseller partners can meet all the needs of end-user customers, for both as-a-service propositions, and for managed print services. ‘The print market is changing, and we have listened to our customers and we’re providing the tools they need to be profitable with printer sales. TD SYNNEX is ready to support its partners in meeting their customers’ needs as they transform their working practices and with it, their whole approach to print.’
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