Sales increased by three percent in the third quarter of the financial year.
Market analysts Context reported on the growth in printer sales in Western Europe in the third quarter of the 2014 financial year, with units sales growing by three percent year-on-year. Context stated that “continuous positive performance of laser MFPs”, alongside “increasing distribution sales of inkjet MFPs”, have driven the growth for the region.
Laser and inkjet MFPs grew in unit sales terms by nine and seven percent respectively, with laser MFPs “driven by colour laser” to year-on-year distribution sales growth of 15 percent, whilst monochrome grew by three percent. Most of the nations in the region also registered positive growth in distribution sales, except France and a few Nordic nations, where “decline was registered”.
The Netherlands, Switzerland and Spain registered double-digit growth in distribution sales of 25 percent, 22 percent and 14 percent respectively, whilst Austria and the UK saw eight and five percent growth in unit sales. Other nations faired slightly well, with Germany, Belgium and Sweden growing by 1.4 percent, 0.8 percent and 0.4 percent respectively.
In terms of nations seeing declines, France’s four percent decline and Italy’s 0.3 percent fall were less than those of Norway, Ireland, Denmark and Finland, which saw 14.1 percent, 16.6 percent, 19.1 percent and 19.5 percent declines in the quarter year-over-year.
OEM-wise, Brother and Lexmark saw unit sales increase by 28 and 24 percent respectively in laser MFP and single-function distribution, while Canon, Kyocera and Ricoh saw negative performance “due to weak sales of laser single-function printers”. However, these three OEMs did also see year-on-year unit sales of laser MFPs grow in the quarter by 20 percent, 51 percent and 32 percent respectively.
Zivile Brazdziunaite, Imaging Market Analyst at Context, commented: “Looking at vendor performance, HP, Brother and Lexmark recorded double-digit year-on?year unit sales growth across Western European distribution in Q3 2014. HP registered strong year?on?year distribution sales performance of 24 percent in the inkjet MFP category and seven percent in the laser MFP category in Q3 2014.”