Increasing adoption of cloud-based services has impacted the sale of printers in India.
Gartner, a technology research company, said the inkjet, copier and multifunction printer (MFP) market in India declined 5.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, IT and IT-enabled services (IT/ITES) sectors and others have put on hold their purchases and this in turn resulted in lower numbers.
“Apart from weak consumer confidence and cautious consumer spending, penetration into the home segment stagnated and growing proliferation of smartphones and tablets, as a means of communication also contributed to the dismal outcome,” said Mr Amrita Choudhury, research analyst at Gartner.
Also, organisations are looking at more services from vendors as compared to buying additional printers. The inkjet printers market experienced a decline of 24.9 per cent compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. Total printers shipped stood at 641,274 units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a decline when compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. This makes 2011 as a bad year for the MFP market as three out of the four quarters saw decline in unit shipments. The first quarter of 2011 saw a 2.5 per cent decline year-on-year and printer shipments stood at 6,65,172.
Similarly, the second quarter saw a 0.8 per cent decline with 6,66,859 printers shipped. However, in the third quarter printer shipments grew 2.4 per cent with 8,01,614 units shipped as compared to the corresponding period in 2010.