The market for printing devices in the Philippines made an astounding turn and grew by 34.5 percent year-over-year (YoY) in the first quarter of 2013.
This development renders the Philippines the most upbeat market in Asia-Pacific which, in contrast, contracted YoY for the sixth quarter in a row and dropped by 7.6 percent.
According to research firm IDC, about 233,400 units of single and multifunction printers (MFP) and copiers were shipped in Q1 2013, compared with only 174,000 units in Q1 2012.
Of the quarter?s total, eight out of 10 were of inkjet technology while laser and serial dot matrix (SDM) accounted for the remaining 12.9 percent and 7.0 percent, respectively. Further, total market revenue hit an all-time high of $48.2 million in Q1 2013.
Pamela Sumanga, market analyst for IDC, explained that this trend was made possible by healthy demand motivated by the bullish outlook of the economy.
?Both consumer and commercial products (i.e., inkjet and laser printing devices) have demonstrated double-digit growth rates YoY and beat expectations due to the end-users? receptiveness to vendors? initiatives around PC bundling, price drops, and trade-in promotions to name a few.
?Dealers, on the other hand, were more open to take in fresh stocks from vendors due to prospects of better sales on the retail front and corporate side as IT investments are projected to pick up, given the confidence on the economy.?
The manner at which the local printing market grew at the start of the year strengthened the earlier projections of growth after two successive years of decline.
From 2011 to 2012, the local printing market was weighed down by the changes in the product line-ups, strategies of vendors, and usage behavior of end-users.
With that adjustment period behind and the indications of renewed end-user demand, IDC projects the Philippine printer market to likely grow by 5.3 percent in 2013 to reach about 802,000 units.
