Colour printer shipments drive worldwide market growth
Worldwide
shipments of page printers grew by almost 19 percent last year, driven
by a big jump in the demand for colour printers.
The
number of printers shipped in 2005 rose to 21.4 million units from 18.1
million in 2004, Gartner said. The increase was driven by a 44.3
percent surge in colour printers to 3.1 million units.
Shipments of monochrome printers, on the other hand, grew by about 15 percent to 18.4 million units.
The
colour printer market soared last year due to price cuts by vendors,
Gartner said. The average selling price fell 21 percent. The monochrome
printer market, on the other hand, was driven by the growth in small
and midsize businesses and in the number of remote workers needing
inexpensive printers.
Hewlett-Packard held on to its lead position
last year, accounting for 49 percent of all shipments. Rounding out the
top five vendors were Samsung Electronics, 8.7 percent; Lexmark, 5.9
percent; Brother, 5.5 percent; and Canon, 5.4 percent.
Gartner
defines a page printer as an output device that prints one page at a
time. They include laser, light-emitting diodes and solid ink printers.