Significant Growth in High-speed Inkjet adoption in Enterprises: IDC

By Mr. Nishant Bansal, Research Manager, IPDS, IDC India

India has always been a traditionally been a laser dominated market with laser printers accounting for almost 60% shipments of printer shipments back in 2013. Traditionally, Inkjet Printers have been targeted towards home user segment while Laser printers were always catered towards SMBs and Corporates. However, with the introduction of Ink tank printers, Inkjet printers have successfully managed to make in-roads into Small and medium businesses (SMB) and capture share from entry level laser printers. As of 2017, according to the IDC Asia Pacific Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker, Inkjet printers have overtaken laser printers and now account for more than 50% of the overall Printer shipments in India.

With SMBs conquered, vendors have shifted focus on now cracking the corporates with business inkjet printers which can stand toe to toe with laser copiers. Higher Print Speeds, significantly higher consumables page yield and superior print quality enabled Laser printers to be a dominating force in the Office Printing space. According to IDC Futurescape 2017, Worldwide Imaging, Printing, and Document Solutions 2018 Predictions, by 2020, Inkjet will have taken up 20% of the workgroup/ Departmental Office Printing market segment share from conventional Laser Technology, driven by improvements in Speed, Quality and Operational Costs.

Apart from the upfront benefits like high speeds and low operating cost, page yield of Business inkjet is also at par or even higher than its laser counter parts in most cases. With ISO 24712 standard of print quality, Inkjet printers print speed and qualityis now comparable to lasers. Both Page yield and Quality are the points of trade-off for the enterprise when it comes to Office Printing, allowing business inkjets to assimilate into office printing environment from their conventional application in Home, SME and Photo Studios.

Business Inkjets provide significant advantages to the enterprises such as: low total cost of ownership; color printing at much lower capex; less replaceable parts; eco-friendly or green printing, etc.