Worldwide page volumes printed from office and home devices will see a sharp decline in 2020 as Covid-19 changes where and how work is done. A new research from analyst firm IDC forecasts page volume will fall 13.7% in 2020, from 3.2 trillion pages in 2019 to 2.8 trillion pages in 2020 (baseline scenario).
While the market is expected to bounce back slightly in the years ahead, page volumes are now forecast to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of -4.8% over the 2019-2024 forecast period, which is notably lower than the 2015-2019 CAGR of -1.2%.
In the near term, page volumes are expected to experience a sharp decline in every region this year due to the impact of Covid-19. The contraction will range from -7% to -17% with North America and Asia-Pacific (excluding China and Japan) expected to decline most dramatically, while China will have the most conservative reduction in print volume.
“The dramatic and sudden transition to work from home in many of the world’s largest economies had a direct impact on office device print volumes,” said Ilona Stankeova, senior research director for imaging devices and document solutions at IDC Europe.
“More than 6 million pages were printed every minute globally in 2019. This amount covers the area of 54 football pitches. Covid-19 is expected to remove print volume that would fill the area of 7 football fields every minute in 2020.”
In addition to a baseline forecast, IDC provides forecasts based on optimistic and pessimistic scenarios. In the optimistic scenario, the five-year CAGR for worldwide page volume will be -3.2%. In the pessimistic scenario, the worldwide page volume CAGR will be -6.6%.
“The decline of office print volume will have a big impact on total spending in the office print market. Hardcopy peripherals vendors will be required to make bold changes to their strategies based on future workstyles in the next normal following the pandemic,” said Eiji Ishida, group manager for imaging, printing and document solutions at IDC Japan.
