Are laser printers preferable to MFPs?

Over the past few years, a steady trend towards an increase in the share of laser MFPs in the structure of the laser printing segment has been observed in both the world and Russian markets.

However, interest in laser printers has increased again recently, especially in the initial high-speed category, whose sales have grown at the double-digit rate over the past two years after several years of decline and have significantly increased their share in the sales structure.

I would like to understand how regular and long-term such a change is in the structure of consumer demand and how market participants should react to this.

To this end, the editors of the "Best Sellers of the IT Market" conducted an expert survey of the leading players in the Russian market of printing devices.

What is the basis of such a shift in user priorities? How stable is it or is it just a short-term counter-trend caused by a change in market conditions?

What factors could play a significant role here: weakening of solvent demand (printers are cheaper than MFPs), redundancy of MFP functionality for a significant part of consumers, aggressive pricing and product policies of some vendors, chronic shortage of start level MFP models?

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Pavel Anokhin, CEO of HP Inc. in Russia

As a manufacturer of printing devices, we regularly use analytical reports of leading agencies (IDC, Gfk, etc.) in our work, which provide data both on the aggregate of all shipments and on sales of devices to end users. And our data do not confirm the existence of a trend towards an increase in the share of laser printers compared to the share of laser MFPs.

In general, from 2016 to 2019, the share of laser printers in the general segment of laser equipment is quite stable. This category of devices occupies a little more than a third of the laser printing technology market. Printers are in demand among customers who need small size, low input cost and who do not need scanning and copying functions.

Approximately the same qualitative picture is observed in the market of printing devices as a whole. The share of printers in the total share of printing devices of all manufacturers and printing technologies (inkjet, laser, thermal dye sublimation, matrix, etc.) does not show significant growth, either.

Thus, the trend under discussion can be considered irrelevant for the entire print segment.

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Tatyana Skokova, Distribution Director, Broadline Distribution Division, MERLION

In general, according to the results of 2019, the market showed good growth both in the laser and in the inkjet segment, despite the first half of the year which was not very successful. However, we did not observe any noticeable disproportion in demand between printers and MFPs.

As you know, supply depends on demand, but demand also depends on supply. And if there are no MFPs on the market, and the consumers need to print, then they will buy printers, and vice versa. This happened in 2019. Disruptions in the supply of some vendors, especially in the 4th quarter, led to the fact that demand grew either for MFPs or for printers.

Of the noticeable trends in laser printing, one can probably note a more distinct shift in the demand segment in the low-end. Once again, the consumer does not want to pay more for more expensive and faster devices. For example, we noticed that consumers did not respond with sufficient demand to one of the new developments that entered the market, a printer without cartridges. Apparently, they have not yet realized all its advantages.

In the inkjet market, sales of devices with a continuous ink supply system continue to grow, but the growth rate was slightly lower than expected, as a result of which stocks and distributors of the second level formed certain stocks, and prices for these devices went down. Most likely, this trend will continue in 2020.