*NEWS*HOME PHOTO PRINTING BOOM EXPECTED

[Anonymous]

Home photo printing boom expected
Digital prints and lower ink costs will help drive sales of inkjet printers
Inkjet
printer makers will continue to benefit from rising ink sales as demand
for photo-quality prints increases along with digital camera sales,
Nomura Securities predicts.
“We think the market has strong growth
potential. We look for home photo processing to spread in line with
improvements in the quality and durability of photos printed with
inkjet printers and decreases in printing costs,” said Nomura analyst,
Tetsuya Wadaki. Nomura is Japan’s largest brokerage.
Digital cameras
are giving increasing numbers of people the chance to print out their
own snaps at home. About 76 million digital cameras will be sold
globally in 2005, and consumers will take home a further 85.5 million
in 2006, predicts Taiwan’s Market Intelligence Center, a technology
research organisation.
Inkjet printers and multi-function inkjet
printers increased their share of the global printer market from 75 per
cent in 2003 to approximately 84 per cent last year, according to
US-based Lyra Research.
“To date, home photo printing has not spread
as rapidly as the use of digital cameras due to the lack of substantial
price benefits versus photo labs and concerns about quality,” Wadaki
said.
But as media costs fall and consumers become more familiar
with the technology, these concerns are expected to fade. Wadaki added
that convenience and privacy will also help sell consumers on home
photo printing.|
“Photo printing uses almost exclusively high-margin
ink made by the printer maker, and the consumption volume of high
priced colour ink increases with the number of photos printed. As such,
the spread of the home photo printing market should improve
profitability at inkjet printer makers,” Wadaki predicted.
Nomura
names Canon and Seiko Epson, two of the world’s top four printer
vendors, among Japanese companies expected to see record printing
division profits from the predicted boom in home photo printing. The
other major inkjet sellers, US-based market leader Hewlett-Packard and
Lexmark, are also likely to benefit.
However, the companies will
face some competition from cut-price third-party ink cartridge makers,
despite the fact that unofficial ink supplies are sometimes criticised
for quality and durability issues. This could exert further downwards
pressure on ink prices.
Only a little over 60 per cent of Epson and
Canon printer cartridges sold in 2005 were actually made by the two
companies, Lyra estimates. The rest were mainly third-party copies sold
more cheaply than the ‘genuine’ cartridges.
Other manufacturers like
HP, which integrate the print head into the cartridge, are able to keep
their cartridge market share over 70 per cent because legal and
technical restrictions make copying more difficult.
Although the ink
cartridge market will expand from approximately 1.15 billion units in
2004 to 1.98 billion in 2009, the printer vendors’ share of the market
will actually shrink from 68.2 per cent to 61 per cent in the face of
increased competition from third party manufacturers, Lyra forecasts.

[Author]

December 26, 2005 at 9:42 AM