Looks like that printers in the Australian and the New Zealand markets will have a tough time in the following months. This prediction is made by International Data Corporation (IDC) based on the low percentage of growth in the second quarter of the year.
IDC, a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Corp., is the premier provider of information related to market intelligence, advisory services, and events from the world of information technology, telecommunication, and consumer technology.
The second quarter sales of printers in Australia and New Zealand were very low with only 760,000 units sold, a staggering 20,000 units short of what the market was expecting. At this rate of 5 percent sequential growth, IDC predicts that the market will shrink by 11 percent in the third quarter of the year if such economic uncertainty and seasonal slowdown continue to dampen sales.
IDC sees such slowdown as a result of the weak demand for laser printers even after printer manufacturers resorted to spend more in such a stale economic state. However, Cheryl Looi, a market analyst at IDC also understands the need to sell aggressively through channel promotion. "This was necessary to encourage sell through," she further comments. This led to a blooming 15 percent year-on-year increase of inkjet printers. IDC observes such strong uptake due to low price and smart marketing of inkjet color printers, which had substituted the printing quality of laser printers.
IDC traces down the companies of this region who benefited the most during the slow second-quarter of the year. HP retained the top spot with 42 percent market share followed by Canon with 20 percent. Brother had a low 18 percent of the market share due to the damage of supply caused by the Japan earthquake. Epson and Samsung followed with a percentage of 10 and 3 respectively.
The only solution that IDC suggests to the printer companies to emerge from this slowdown is that vendors and channels should conduct a final round of sales towards the end of the year to clear off excessive stocks. This can compensate for slow growth of the second quarter. Let’s hope that the major printer companies take the prediction of IDC seriously to avoid such a fall in the future market shares.
