Retired print industry veteran discusses the state of the industry, stating “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.
Jim Forrest, a retired print industry veteran with 39 years of experience, has commented on the continuing trends of the industry in a column on Actionable Intelligence.
Forrest, who retired in 2008, first started working in the industry in 1969 and states that throughout “supplies were always a very lucrative business for both the OEM and the aftermarket” and remarked that the biggest change involved “the intensity of the competition”.
“Three years ago, the printer OEMs and the aftermarket were just beginning to get serious about managed print services (MPS) […] Today, all of the OEMs offer MPS as do all of the larger aftermarket companies.”
With the OEMs steadily consolidating companies with MPS services and offerings, and aftermarket companies being merged under Clover, Forrest comments that “the days of the “mom and pop” remanufacturer seem to be over”.
The reason for the intense competition is believed to be increased competition, with printing volumes reducing: “the last full year I worked for Lyra Research (2007) marked the first year that shipments and revenue from sales of office paper did not increase.”
Regardless, Forrest ends with the supposition that “not much else has changed. OEMs are still filing lawsuits against the aftermarket. The aftermarket is still frantically working to develop chips and technologies to outsmart the latest OEM offerings. The hardware continues to become cheaper, faster, and better. The technologies of the inks and toners continue to improve, making them ever more difficult for the aftermarket to reverse engineer, something that they always seem to be able to accomplish. The more things change, the more they stay the same.”