Heavy price and bundling promotions help Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) printer market to grow in 2Q13.
Techday reports on IDC’s findings that the ANZ printer market continued to expand during the second quarter of 2013, with 443,000 units shipped, with the analyst group attributing “heavy price and bundling promotions, particularly in the entry level segment” as well as the growth of high-end machines replacing colour laser printers, to the expansion.
Arunachalam Muthiah, Market Analyst of Peripherals Research at IDC New Zealand, commented: “The second quarter of 2013 saw aggressive promotions on various levels including price, bundling, cash back, catalogue promotions as well as TV commercials. Continued traction within the photographic printer segment and augmentation of A4 inkjet printers that could print A3 added to the positive development.
“However, with the close of financial year in March for certain vendors, this expansion was offset due to the limited in-take of new stock on the back of already existing stock in their channel.”
While unit shipments saw a sequential increase of around two percent, on a year-on-year basis the numbers dropped by three percent. The market’s revenue meanwhile declined 18 percent during 2012 and 2013, which Muthiah said was “mainly due to the aggressive promotional activity across a large section of the market primarily executed to push shipments upwards by all major vendors”.
Overall, IDC expects the market to slow down during 2013 compared to last year, with growth mainly being sustained by “end-user promotions”. 1.7 million units are expected to be shipped across the ANZ inkjet printer market this year.
In terms of vendors, HP led the market with a market share of 44 percent, followed by Canon at 26 percent, Epson at 16 percent and Brother at 13 percent.