Colour increasingly profitable for print

IDC report looks at effect of colour on print sales

Increased demand for colour printing is boosting profit possibilities for imaging vendors, at least in the US, according to a new report from IDC.

Jonathan Bees, research director for hardcopy device usage at IDC, said: "These findings bode well for a print industry that has had difficulty generating profits and is always looking for new revenue opportunities."

Bees added that documents such as medical claim forms and new account applications, once squarely in the monochrome domain, are now being printed in colour, with a view to enhancing their overall effectiveness.

This is generating increased profits for print vendors, he said.

The finding is from a 1,480-user US survey which discovered that 47 per cent of weekly print volumes now contain colour on the page. In addition, the largest companies polled used the most colour – with big organisations that responded opting for colour in 50 per cent of their weekly print volumes.

Interestingly, companies trying to cut print, copy and fax costs – whether outsourced or optimised – used more colour than average and more than companies not trying to reduce such costs.

"This finding is consistent with IDC research which shows that managed print environments result in higher colour use as pages from other print service providers or parts of the company are brought under contract as part of a cost-reduction strategy," according to a summary from the market watcher.

The report also found that colour usage correlates with workgroup size. The larger the workgroup sharing the device, the more colour is used.

Unsurprisingly, marketing departments led the pack when it came to overall colour use.

Top brands for colour print in the US were Epson, Brother, Xerox and Konica Minolta, according to IDC.