UK printer sales crash

Analyst Gartner revealed sales of printers, copiers and multifunctional products in the UK fell 26.4% in volume in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 18% year-on-year, says Channel Web.

Tosh Prabhakar, senior printing market analyst at Gartner, said UK sales contracted far more than in the rest of EMEA, which overall shrank 8.4% by volume. Until at least 2010, organisations will focus on right-sizing the number of devices, rather than buying new printers.

“However, managed print solutions (MPS) are huge,” said Prabhakar. “We do not track them in terms of revenue, -it is quite difficult and many providers do not give that information, but MPSs are now some of the strongest offerings.”

Reducing environmental impact is an issue that many businesses take very seriously, according to PR Inside.

Businesses and manufacturers in the photocopier and print industries are no exception to this and several new and innovative developments in relation to reducing environmental impact have occurred recently.

Canon is currently conducting research within the printing industry to find out what issues professional printers are being faced with on a daily basis and what tools and resources would be most effective in supporting them. This research is being conducted to aid the development of an environmental module in the Essential Business Builder programme.

Samsung Electronics America, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, is collaborating with leading solutions provider MWA Intelligence (MWAi) to help businesses streamline print operations to minimise downtime and increase productivity, reports The Earth Times.

Samsung will embed MWAi's IDM technology into the firm's line-up of monochrome and colour laser multifunctional printers to enable remote device monitoring from any location.

In addition, Samsung has integrated their print management solution CounThru, with MWAi's IntelliDashboard, a reporting tool that monitors consumables, service alerts and meters.