Print IT Reseller - issue 52

01732 759725 28 INKJET Industry players and watchers alike recognise that inkjet promises much in the way of business opportunity. Undeniably the flexibility that inkjet offers in providing low cost, acceptable quality print, taps perfectly into the current mega-trends of on-demand publishing, short-run print jobs and personalisation across all forms of media. On paper, and on other substrates, inkjet can seriously compete and win against the incumbent predominant business and commercial print technologies – laser and analogue offset. Success has not been overnight. Inkjet won its first battle in the consumer space where the appeal of colour output and the low cost hardware won the hearts and minds of both former laser users and net-new users. Vendors were quick to milk this cash cow for all it was worth by encouraging and stimulating the use of colour printing to drive profitable inkjet cartridge sales. Applications that targeted children enticing them to print for fun and for schoolwork worked well and home users were soon replacing their laser devices for inkjet and in many cases buying additional printers to separate business and personal use in the home. Photo printing was all the rage and vendors enjoyed the revenues generated by users printing their current and backlog libraries of family photos with little regard for cost. In fact, the running cost of printers – inkjet and laser in the home was never an issue for most. The period of feast lasted a good ten years before home users began to discover digital screen technology in the shape of iPhones, iPads and other such communication devices. This, combined with an economic recession meant that the cost of print was under the radar and that any disposable household income was diverted away from old-school printers to shiny new communication technology. Need to print almost subsided Then as social media took hold, the need to print almost completely subsided, print volumes tanked and vendors were looking at an increasingly gaping hole in their profits. Inkjet print had won over laser print but lost out to the digital page. While photo printers such as the HP Sprocket has tapped into nostalgia and enjoyed some success in very recent years, it is unlikely that we will ever see the return to the home page volumes that were generated in the mid-late nineties and early noughties. In the office space, vendors such as Brother, Canon, Epson and HP with a vested interest in proprietary inkjet technology have been trying to promote the concept of ‘Business Inkjet’. Installing new inkjet colour devices and/or replacing existing monochrome laser devices stimulates the printing of the more profitable colour page and represents a growth opportunity in a declining market. Overall, enterprise pages may be on a downward trajectory, but at least each page printed will return more colour ink revenue. Business inkjet was initially a difficult sell as enterprise users in general had negative perceptions of the technology in comparison with laser. Inkjet was perceived to be slower, more expensive and have an inferior print quality. However, inkjet improvements and advancements over the years have Inkjet has long been tipped as the digital print technology of the future, says Sharon McNee, Research Manager at IDC Inkjet: finally access all areas gradually eroded these barriers to potential growth. The key tenets of better, faster, cheaper, smaller, now apply and enterprise users are more amenable to inkjet devices even as part of managed print service fleets. Speed, quality and price/performance Epson and HP continue to push the speed, quality and price/performance boundaries. In 2017, Epson launched a 100 ppm device for the office. Product portfolio expansion and strategic partnerships with the likes of Nuance for print management software, mean that Epson is becoming an increasing threat in the enterprise and public sector. HP continues to widen, enhance and strengthen its line-up. HP's PageWide platform sits across both its office and production ranges and is helping HP grow strongly in the office and production markets – the former especially in Western Europe. The combination and availability of A3 and A4 PageWide products pose a growing threat to competing laser products and vendors across the region. With HP continually expanding its channel base for PageWide products, the laser market and incumbent vendors are under increasing threat of losing key channel partners. IDC forecasts that the UK market for business inkjet will show a 7.2 per The key tenets of better, faster, cheaper, smaller, now apply and enterprise users are more amenable to inkjet devices even as part of managed print service fleets continued p31...