Asia Pacific large format market is “stable”
June 20, 2018
Recent IDC data indicates that the large format printer market in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan) should “remain stable”.
According to the latest edition of the IDC Asia/Pacific Quarterly Large Format Printer Tracker, 2018Q1 Final Historical Release, the market should achieve “a slight growth year-on-year (YoY) by 2.24 percent” as well as a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) decline of 2.85 percent.”
The CAD/Technical market showed a 19.6 percent year-on-year growth and a 4.8 percent quarter-on-quarter growth. This growth was driven by strong growth in the Inkjet segment in Australia, India, PRC and Thailand. On the other hand, IDC revealed, the Laser market declined throughout the whole APeJ region on a year-on-year basis, except for the Philippines, due to the newly launched “Build Build Build!” government project.
Meanwhile the graphic market registered a stable trend with a 1.4 percent decline year-on-year basis and a 4.6 percent decline quarter-on-quarter basis. However, IDC explained that “we can still see rapid growth for UV and Aqueous/Dye-Sublimation segments in most countries while Solvent declined significantly.”
In terms of vendors’ ranking, HP Inc. was still the market leader with a market share of 17.6 percent, followed by Epson (9.2 percent). Chinese vendors kept growing their market share, and for the first time in the past six quarters New Century (6.8 percent) overtook Canon (6.2 percent).
Country highlights for 2018 Q1:
Australia
In terms of the CAD/Technical market, 2018 Q1 achieved both a strong year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter growth, reaching 23 percent and 64 percent respectively. The main driver is the Australian government, which just revealed several major projects in early 2018 that will be initiated this year, including vital projects related to construction, public infrastructure, power plant, manufacturing and mining. Regarding the graphics market, 2018 Q1 was a stable quarter with a 2.9 percent mild drop year-on-year. UV and Aqueous/Dye-Sublimation posted continuous growth while Eco-Solvent and Aqueous declined. Since a big event such as Pacprint will not happen this year, which IDC explains will result in a lack of acceleration in the graphic market.
India
The large format printer market in India grew 11.7 percent quarter-on-quarter and 38.5 percent year on year in 2018 Q1, with shipments reaching 2,954 units. Shipments in the large format CAD/Technical printer market segment grew 17.7 percent quarter-on-quarter and 55.2 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in the Inkjet printer segment. Demonetisation, GSTs and RERA have affected the real estate market in 2017. As the market is stabilizing in 2018 and the government has announced various infrastructure projects, this has fuelled shipment of CAD printers in India. On the other hand, shipments on the graphics side were up by 7.6 percent quarter-on-quarter and 28.3 percent year-on-year. Though solvent printers dominate the total graphics market, Aqueous, UV and Latex were key drivers of this growth.
Korea
Compared to Australia and India, Korea’s CAD/Technical market had a 7.5 percent year-on-year decline (11.4 percent quarter-on quarter). Overall, the CAD market is on a declining trend due to the saturation of CAD market and decrease of usage, IDC explains. Especially for machines over 42″, vendors are shifting their targets from CAD to Graphic, although they were made for CAD printing. Meanwhile, the graphic market remained stable year-on-year but had a 30.9 percent growth quarter-on-quarter. IDC says, “We can see a promising trend for Aqueous/Dye-Sublimation and UV, especially Aqueous/Dye-Sublimation. Soft signage grew fast in Korea with the acceleration from PyeongChang Olympics.”
PRC
Although shipments in the large format printer market had a slight 2.3 percent year-on-year decline, total revenue grew by 6.1 percent quarter-on-quarter and 21.2 percent year-on-year, and total shipment reached 21,445 units in 2018 Q1. The CAD/Technical market achieved a 14.3 percent year-on-year growth. PRC will still post strong GDP growth until the end of 2020 which is the last year of the thirteen “five-year plan”. The government has announced tons of construction and infrastructure projects that need to be completed before the end of 2020 and this has a positive impact on the CAD/Technical market.
On the other hand, the graphic market posted a slight decline both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, 3.9 percent and 7.4 percent respectively. This decline is mainly caused by Solvent due to strict environment restrictions starting from late 2016. However, UV showed a significant growth both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, while Aqueous/Dye-Sublimation also posted a strong year-on-year growth.
Thailand
Thailand’s CAD/Technical market posted very strong growth in 2018 Q1, reporting a 13.3 percent year-on-year and 124.7 percent quarter-on-quarter. On the other hand, the graphic market ended up with a 15.2 percent year-on-year drop. The decline was due to Aqueous and Eco-Solvent, while Aqueous/Dye-Sublimation and UV were still growing and driving the market.
“With governments pushing construction projects, we saw a promising growth in Technical market this quarter, also with more and more attention on environmental friendly applications and solutions, UV and Dye-Sublimation market has been continuously growing and will still be a strong accelerator of total APeJ Large Format Printer market,” says Effie Wang, Market Analyst, IPDS, IDC.
Categories : Around the Industry
Tags : APeJ IDC Large Format market Printers
