Three billion pages printed daily in EMEA

Paperless offices still a long way off as regional page volumes could stretch to the moon and back each day

For all enterprises' talk of moving towards the paperless office, EMEA businesses are still printing almost three billion pages a day, enough to cover 18 football pitches every second.

Figures from IDC find that 3.1 trillion pages were printed worldwide from digital hardcopy devices in 2010. The number of pages printed in developing regions grew by 7.3 per cent year on year, while volumes in the developed world fell by 1.3 per cent.

In western Europe, the amount of pages printed dropped by one per cent annually last year, but levels in central and eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa mushroomed more than 14 per cent. Almost three billion pages were printed per day in EMEA last year. This equates to enough to stretch to the moon and back.

The installed base of colour laser devices grew across the region, with page volumes up 16 per cent year on year in 2010. This growth stemmed mainly from the MFP arena.

But mono devices still represent 84 per cent of the laser-installed base in EMEA, and churned out 773 billion pages last year. A3 devices accounted for 41 per cent of overall page volumes.

Inkjet printers comprise more than half of all hardcopy devices across the region, but were responsible for just eight per cent of pages printed.

HP held the biggest page share across all categories in 2010 and, as such, is EMEA's top print vendor in terms of pages printed. Canon and Xerox maintain their second and third positions respectively.