According to research firm IDC, the Philippine printer market recorded a significant year-on-year and sequential growth at 195.7% and 19.4%, respectively.
The improvement in the supply and production capacity of factories and demand slowdown that were affected by lockdowns last year, resulted to overall growth of the market.
“The enhanced community quarantine in 2020Q2 affected the overall printer shipments and demand. As the economy slowly reopened after the strict lockdown, there has been a recovery due to spike in demand for home use and school’s modular learning program for the rest of 2020,” said Lilibeth Agudo, market analyst at IDC Philippines.
“Now over a year into pandemic, 2021Q2 presented a positive outlook across all segments as more industries were allowed to operate due to more relaxed quarantine restrictions and vaccine availability. Postponed spending was revisited for both government and commercial segments, continuous demand from the consumer segment gave brands opportunity to bring in more shipments.”
Top 3 Home/Office Printer Brands
Epson remained the market leader in 2021Q2 with 66.1% of the overall market share. Shipments have normalized with more orders being served to their partners for demand heavily driven by consumer and education segment.
Epson continues to fulfill orders for different schools nationwide, mostly for their ink tank models that hold the biggest share in their overall shipments.
Brother went up to the second spot in the overall home/office printer market, recording 11.0% of share. Despite experiencing decline due to parts production delay, demand remained strong in their retail channels.
Driven by home school/office/business use and additional printer requirement for school’s module printing. As for the laser market, purchases from the SMB segment showed improvement in 2021Q2 which helped the shipments to grow.
Canon occupied the third spot, holding 10.4% of the market share. Inkjet market dropped compared to the previous quarter as their shipment experienced delays due to the imbalance of supply and production chain because of lockdowns imposed in Vietnam where their factory is located.
Regardless of the decline in shipments, Canon’s inkjet models are getting enough demand, mostly from the consumer segment. Laser, on the other hand recorded significant growth. Aside from the additional deployment for a government project they won in 2021Q1, the reopening of the economy meant an improvement in purchases of their clients especially from the essential services.
“The prolonged quarantine restriction is still the biggest challenge for most of the printer brands. However, the printer market is still expected to rebound with consumer and business confidence getting back slowly as the vaccination rollout continues,” added Agudo.
“As Philippines economy has started to see a sign of recovery, shipments are expected to show recovery in the coming quarters and next year, provided vendors are able to fulfill the shipment demand. Growth in the SMB segment will be the key, as they were badly impacted by series of restrictions in the country since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Mohit Raizada, senior research manager at IDC Asia Pacific.
