Indian printer-copier market sluggish in 2014, but govt comes to the rescue: IDC

24th May 2014
Indian printer-copier market sluggish in 2014, but govt comes to the rescue: IDC

New Delhi May 25, 2014: The Indian printer-copier market grows -- but at snail's  pace -- finds the latest study analysts IDC, which covers the first three months of 2014.
Despite the slowdown in the consumer segment, a recovery in the India Hardcopy Peripherals  (HCP) market was seen -- primarily driven by the Government’s procurement  and supported by the Medium and Large Enterprises in India.
The HCP market in India grew 1.5% sequentially in 2014 Q1 and reached 801,000 units in terms of shipments. This was largely driven by the Government’s buying in the Laser segment, which recorded a significant sequential growth of 12.8%. But Inkjet segment performed weakly due to low consumer demand across all price band segments, resulting in a marginal growth of 1.5%.

Across the printer market, HP managed to achieve 48.3% shipment share in 2014 Q1 and remained as the market leader in India, followed by Canon and Epson with 16.4% and 10.5% share respectively.  Ricoh and  Samsung came next with 5.7% and 5.3% respectively.
The Inkjet HCP market witnessed a sequential decline of 15.5% in 2014 Q1. All the leading vendors in the Inkjet HCP* market recorded sequential decline. Market has grown by 9.3% in terms of unit shipments in 2014 Q1 as compared to 2013 Q4
In laser printers, the surge in Government business was the prime reason for growth; it was also supported by the stable channel business. HP continued to be the market leader with a share of 52.1%, followed by Canon and Samsung at the second and third position.
A very high sequential growth of 68.4% was seen in 2014Q1, in laser copiers. Ricoh’s market share has grown tremendously to 30.0% in 2014 Q1 as they were among the few vendors to bag major deals in Government sector
Says Mohammed Riaz Ahmed,  Market Analyst at IDC India: “Excluding the Government business, the demand of Laser printer  is slowing among the Medium and Large Enterprises due to the combination of national and state elections where Enterprises decided to hold their purchase till the new Government is in. However, overall business from this segment was stable due to the financial year-end purchase, where corporate would like to use up their remaining budgets. All these factors collectively led to the growth of the Laser market.”
Hardcopy peripherals is current jargon for printers + copiers