Study On Trends In Digital Printing

RESTON, Va.—In late 2009 PRIMIR® commissioned IT Strategies to investigate the digital printing market and provide insights into why the much-anticipated tipping point hasn’t occurred, when it might, and where opportunities exist today.

The key objective of the PRIMIR “Megatrends in Digital Printing Applications” study was straightforward: Evaluate 12 major print applications and determine which (if any) will migrate from analog to digital production printing, when, and why?

Over the course of eight months IT Strategies conducted extensive research with experts, printers, and customers via e-mail surveys and personal interviews—more than 900 respondents in total. The study focused on a variety of printed media: books, catalogs, direct mail, labels, magazines, manuals, marketing collateral, newspapers, packaging (folding cartons and flexible), and specialty printing such as calendars, photo books, etc.). The study quantifies the page volume and rate of transition from analog to digital production printing for each application.

The research was limited exclusively to production printing, and excluded any equipment under $50,000 in acquisition cost, as well as desktop printers or copier/MFP devices.

A surprise finding from the research: few of the studied 12 applications will tip within the timeframe of the study (by 2014), some have momentum to possibly tip by 2020 or later, but the tipping point for most of the applications is decades away, if at all. However, digital printing has made some serious inroads in the non-publishing related applications, especially where there is opportunity to add value through complex variable-data content. Book printing, however, is the one publishing application that has embraced digital printing and will continue to see positive growth.

“A more important finding is that the analog production page volume is shrinking independent of digital production print volume growth," says Marco Boer, vice president, IT Strategies, and principal researcher on this study. "In fact, while digital production printing in North America is forecast for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.5 percent through 2014, it is from a very small overall volume base (22 billion in 2009 to 33 billion pages in 2014). Despite the relatively small volume, the value of those North American pages, including value-added services is much higher than analog. Analog printing will see a negative CAGR (-5 percent) for the same period.”