MFPs Continue to Lead the Way in the Worldwide Hardcopy Peripherals Market

The good folks at International Data Corporation (IDC) continue to feed the Doc's insatiable habit for info on what's going on in the document world. This time the massive data machine from Framingham has a report out on what sort of printers are selling best. Seems not as many of any kind are selling these past few months, but the trends are, nonetheless, fascinating.

A key bright spot in the overall hardcopy peripherals market worldwide continues to be the color laser multifunction peripheral (MFP) market. This segment had another solid showing in a challenging economic environment with unit shipments declining just 6% year over year in the second quarter of 2009 (2Q09).

As color continues to penetrate the overall hardcopy market, the MFP market is weathering the current economic downturn better than its single function counterparts, as products continue to make the transition towards multifunction.

Overall, the worldwide hardcopy peripherals market declined 21% year over year in 2Q09 to 24.1 million units. Shipment value declined 23.2% over the same time period to $11.6 billion.

In the current economic environment, vendors are focusing on offering cost cutting and/or productivity enhancements to customer's existing document infrastructure as well as driving managed print services.

• The inkjet market continues to be the dominant technology segment with 16.6 million units shipped in 2Q09. The color inkjet MFP segment showed the second highest growth rate among all technology segments behind color laser MFPs with 13% year-over-year growth.
• The monochrome laser market remains the largest technology segment in terms of value at $4.2 billion and has the largest potential regarding MFP opportunity. This segment has the lowest rate of MFP penetration of all major non-impact segments.
• Color laser penetration continues to increase, driven up by the market performance of the global color laser MFP market. Although, it had a negative growth rate this quarter, this segment continues to outperform the overall hardcopy peripherals market.

So how's this compare to your own buying patterns? The Doc bets you're going more and more toward color multi-function, too.

You can read the full press release here.