Australian MFD Market Boosts Growth
Australian MFD Market Boosts Growth
December 18, 2006: According to market analysts IDC, Australian businesses are keen for multifunctional devices (MFDs) with a 10.8 percent market growth in the third quarter and an increase of 36.7 percent from the same period in 2005.
Based on their market analysis report, IDC says it’s the printer-based MFD market that can be thanked for the strong return. Up 25.4 percent from the previous quarter, printer-based MFDs outdid their copier-based cousins where the market shrank by 4.2 percent
IDC also found Australian business are chasing colour in their documents. In much of the copier-based MFD market, the report states that there has been a continued transition from monochrome to colour devices.
The small but still surviving demand for black and white printing/copying traditionally occurs at the government level and other organisations with a tight budget. However IDC sees a trend of falling maintenance and installation costs in the colour market as strong encouragement for organisations making the more from their dusty black and white outputs.
Overall, MFDs are increasingly driven by the printer function. In the third quarter, printer-based laser MFDs increased their market share to 58.6 percent. It was a staggering 71 percent growth in shipments compared to the same period in 2005. Yet an 87 percent strong majority revealed that when it comes to printer-based MFDs, Australian businesses are still choosing monochrome devices.
However there’s hope ahead for colour documents spun from printer-based MFDs. IDC says the October introduction of colour models in the sub $1000 region may push prices down and propel colourful growth in this market segment.
Katarzyna Czubak, market analyst for Hardcopy Peripherals at IDC, explains where the devices are going: “Printer-based MFDs still concentrate in the low-end of the market, and 83.2 percent of monochrome shipment happened in a segment below 20 pages per minute,” she says. “In the case of colour devices 92.1 percent of those were shipped in a segment below 10 pages per minute.”
The vendors taking a slice of the printer-based laser MFD market have remained relatively tight with their market shares. IDC revealed HP as continued market leader in space holding a 33.1 percent share in the market share. Samsung following on 25.6 percent while Brother kept up with 12.7 percent. Canon held on with a 10.3 percent market share and Lexmark came in with 7.3 percent. The remaining 11 percent was shared amongst alternate vendors.