Study will look at “print-related attitudes, needs and desires of mobile device users” and the barriers they may face in printing.
InfoTrends has announced that it will conduct a new study, titled ‘Mobile Devices and the Impact on Print’, which will aim to discover the “relative opportunity to print across a broad range of mobile device users” following evidence suggesting that while many users of smartphones and tablets have a desire to print from those devices, many are not currently doing so.
The analyst stated that this may indicate that these groups of users “face different and multiple barriers to printing”, and vendors are “unclear on which groups of users represent the largest untapped potential for print, and what those users need most to enable them to print”.
The study will therefore look into these issues, using a combination of primary and secondary research across the US, Mexico, Brazil, and China; analysing “the differences and commonalities between business and personal printing uses”. It will attempt to answer questions such as how much print is diverted and whether users would print at a later time; and what kind of barriers users are facing, for example access to a printer, knowledge, or technical.
Furthermore, InfoTrends intends to develop a market modelling tool to measure the impact of different events or activities that would increase or decrease print potential, and to establish what enablers will increase print the most for the various types of users; for example ease of payment, access to a printer, and the amount of time at a location when print is desired.
John Shane, Director of InfoTrends’ Communication Supplies Consulting Service, commented: “The purpose of this research is to uncover the relative opportunity to print across a broad range of mobile device users from teenagers to office and mobile business users to retired people. Our goal is to understand what each of these groups and other groups of people need in order to satisfy their desire to print from their mobile devices.”