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TONER SINGLE FUNCTION PRINTER MARKETS IN 2020 SUMMARY

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Regional Report by Petr Kramerius, Regional Manager, Infosource

THE WESTERN SFP EUROPEAN MARKET

The total Western European single function toner (laser) page printer (SFP) market decreased by 13% in the Covid year of 2020 compared to FY 2019, due to the continuing preference for multifunctional laser and inkjet devices and reduced demand for SFP, a trend common to the vast majority of the markets in the region, not changed even by economic downgrade caused by the pandemic. From the revenue point of view, the WEU SFP market was worth approx. 780m EUR (compared to 289m EUR of EEU SFP market value)  and registered a decrease of 18%. In comparison, the total WEU toner laser MFP market value in FY 2020 was 8bn EUR, and total inkjet market was 1.8bn EUR (inkjet MFP 1.6bn).

An interesting aspect of this decrease was the anticipated total disappearance of Samsung sales, which vanished from 219k units in FY 2019 to zero units in FY 2020, it took a share of full 4% from the 13% decrease of the WEU total market in FY 2020. These Samsung units were partly replaced by a corresponding increase share of HP and Brother sales. Samsung remains a manufacturer of SFP devices (for HP and Xerox). Proportionally, the total SFP market in Western Europe with 2m units sold represented a share of approx. 57% of the total Copier/MFP market (3.6m units) in Western Europe, a significant amount of unit sales.

The decrease of unit sales in FY 2020 in the individual markets of the region was registered everywhere, with the exceptions of Belgium, Denmark, Greece and Portugal, which were the only one to register slight increases. The largest German market (27.2% market share) decreased by 17%, the second-largest Italian market (14.1 share) was down 17%, the third United Kingdom market (11.9%) fell 30%, while the fourth-largest French market (10.8% share) declined by 12%. The most significant decrease surprisingly took place in Turkey, where unit sales registered a decline of 24%. In Turkey under the conditions of the pandemic lockdown the SFP continued to lose ground and its share to inkjet MFP devices, which increased by 9%.

The BW SFP market continued its traditional dominance over color printers representing 83% of the total SFP market in FY 2020. However, BW printer unit sales decreased by 11%, while COL SFP sales decreased by 18%. Within the BW speed categories, there was recorded just a 3% decline of the low-end market (0-29 ppm), while in the middle range market, the most popular category shifted one level down from the 40-59 ppm category (30.3% share) to the 30-39 ppm category (36.9% share). The high-end market (60-90+ ppm) fell 19%. Within the color SFP market, there was an increase of 10-19 ppm by 4%, otherwise, the proportion of speed categories stayed the same as in FY 2019 when the 20-29 ppm speed category was the main category with a 38.5% share despite a decrease of 24%.

In terms of brands results in FY 2020, HP retained the position of the traditionally dominant market leader in the total Western European SFP market with a share of 41.6% and increase of unit sales by 10%. Brother also registered a sale increase of 5% and stayed at its traditional 2nd place with a market share of 23.7%. HP, together with Brother, formed a strong market presence and accounted for approx. 66% of the total WEU market, similarly to their position on the toner laser Copier/MFP WEU market.

Kyocera continued improving its position in FY 2020 with a move from 4th to 3rd position, occupied previously by Lexmark, which suffered a sales decrease. Most of the other remaining brands in FY 2020 retained the same or similar positions and market shares as in FY 2019. As already mentioned, Samsung totally disappeared from its 5th position in FY 2019 to non-existence in FY 2020 due to the merge with HP, and its 5th position was taken by and Canon.

In terms of bestseller models at the total SFP market, HP confirmed the top position with its LaserJet Pro M15a, which jumped from 41st position in FY 2019 to the top in FY 2020. Otherwise, HP placed six models within the top ten. The second spot was taken by Brother with HL L2350 DW, while Kyocera best selling model, and the only one within the top ten, was ECOSYS P2040 DN.

By the end of 2019, HP introduced to the market a totally new concept of manually reffilled devices – tank refill models, an analogy to inkjet CISS ink tank models – Neverstop Laser 1000a and 1000nw. These two models sold together about 5k units in FY 2019, the vast majority (4.6k units) in Turkey. In 2020 HP decided to expand this particular part of the market with another new model Neverstop Laser 1001nw, which alone sold around 13k units out of total 14k Neverstop Laser WEU sales in FY 2020. This time the sales were distributed more evenly in the largest markets of the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany and France. All these tank refill models are manufactured for HP by Samsung.

As already mentioned, the WEU total SFP market was worth around 780m EUR in FY 2020. Revenue wise HP stayed in first place with a 33.3% market share, when Brother moved from 4th to 2nd position with an 11.8% market share, overtaking Lexmark and Kyocera despite a revenue decrease of 7%. Kyocera remained at 3rd place despite a revenue fall of 19%.

Regarding the single function printers market in terms of manufacturers, in FY 2020 the top spot was traditionally taken by Canon with a 43.3% market share and increase of manufactured units by 5%, followed by Brother (23.7% share) with the same increase percentage as Canon in manufactured units. From the total HP sold SFP units in FY 2020, 94% were manufactured by Canon, the rest by Samsung.  Canon, Brother and Konica Minolta were the only brands to register an increase of manufactured units last year, when Konica in 9th position registered an increase fo 31%.

THE EASTERN SFP EUROPEAN MARKET

The total Eastern European SFP market registered an increase of 7% in the FY 2020 period compared to the previous year, stoping the previous decrease trend. It is important to stress that this increase trend occurred when in FY 2020 Samsung finally and totally disappeared from the market from 125k unit sales in FY 2019. Despite such a sudden “deletion” of many unit sales, the EEU SFP market was still able to register a solid increase. Proportionally, the total EEU SFP market represented 58% of the WEU SFP market and 55% of the overall Copier/MFP Eastern European market, so an important amount of sales.

The value of the EEU SFP market was worth approx. 289m EUR (compared to 780m EUR of WEU SFP market) and paradoxically in connection with the unit sales increase registered a decrease of 3%. In comparison, the total EEU toner laser MFP market value in FY 2020 was 1.4bn EUR and the total inkjet market was 374bn EUR (inkjet MFP 324m EUR). The discrepancy between the total units market increase versus total revenue market decrease can be easily explained. The reason lies in the costumers strong preference for less expensive devices during pandemic lockdowns, when the uncertainty of the whole situation forced most people and businesses to save their finances. Hence the majority of sales took place in the lower speed segments with low-cost devices, while the upper speeds segments with more expensive devices all decreased, some drastically. Please see the revenue breakdowns by speed categories in Table 1 and Table 2 below this article.

In FY 2020, a slight majority of the markets registered an increase trend, including the largest market of Russia with its market share of 54.1%, which went up by 13%. The second-largest Polish market (15.7% share) remained almost at the same level with a decrease of just 1%, while in third place the Czech Republic (6.4% share) market increased by 25% and the Romanian (fourth-largest with 4.4% share) by 21%. However, almost half of the markets registered decreases in unit sales. As in previous periods, the Russian market set an overall trend in the area which was confirmed in most of the major markets. Revenue-wise, the Russian market generated approx. 152m EUR of the total 289m EUR SFP sales.

The BW market continued its traditional solid dominancy over color printers with a 94% share of the total SFP market and an increase of unit sales by 9%. In H1 2020, the color printer market sales decreased by 24% compared to FY 2019. Within BW speed categories, most of the sales happened as usual within the 20-29 ppm category (46.1% share) which increased 15%, followed by  the 30-39 ppm (24.4% share) category with a 12% increase. In the color SFP market, most of the sales also took place within the middle range speed category of 20-29 ppm (44.1% share), which was up 28%, and the 30-49 ppm category (24% share), which increased 25%. All color speed categories decreased except for the lowest 0-9% which increased by 18%.

Overall, HP strongly confirmed the position of the traditionally dominant market leader in the total Eastern European SFP market with a share increase of 11% to 43.7% and an increase in unit sales of full 43%. Brother stayed in 2nd place with a market share of 15.5% and unit sales increase of 22%. Xerox jumped from 6th to 3rd position with a substantial unit sales increase of 64% to a market share of 11.5%, with 55% of its sales placed in the Russian market. Kyocera sales decreased by 25% and stepped down to 4th place, held in FY 2019 by Samsung. The Chinese brand Pantum also registered a substantial sales increase of 58%, when 99% of its sales were also placed in Russia. Most of the remaining other brands in FY 2020 retained the same or very similar positions according to market share as in FY 2019.

As in Western Europe, by the end of 2019 HP also introduced to the Eastern European SFP market tank refill models, an analogy to inkjet CISS ink tank models – Neverstop Laser 1000a and 1000nw, which sold together about 11k units in FY 2020, the same amount as last year. Nearly half of the sales took place in Poland, then ¼ in Russia and the rest was distributed within the rest of the markets. Interestingly HP did not introduce in FY 2020 to the EEU SFP market the new model Neverstop Laser 1001nw, as it did in WEU where it sold 14k units.

As already mentioned, the total EEU SFP market value was about 289m EUR in FY 2020. From this value HP at the top spot with a market share of 43.5% registered revenue of approx. 126m EUR, increased by 27% compared to FY 2019. Xerox moved from 3rd to 2nd position with a 32% revenue increase, overtaking Kyocera, which experienced a revenue downfall of 36%.

Regarding the single function printers market in terms of manufacturers in FY 2020, the top spot was traditionally taken by Canon with a 48.5% market share and increase of manufactured units by 33%, followed by Brother (15.5% share) with a 22% increase percentage, which took the 2nd place from Samsung (ended 3rd). Canon, Brother, Pantum, Fuji-Xerox and Konica Minolta were the only brands to register an increase of manufactured units last year. Similarly, as in WEU, from the total HP sold SFP units in FY 2020, all 95% were manufactured by Canon, the remaining part by Samsung.

SUMMARY

Single function page printer sales continued their long term decline in WEU but started abruptly an increase trend in EEU despite the disappearance of Samsung from the SFP market. However, both in WEU and EEU the number of sales of the Single function page printers was still high and represented a significant amount of sales, so this category of printers is far from disappearing in the near future.

In FY 2020 as in the previous years, SFP devices faced the tough competition from multifunctional toner-based devices, which were able to offer higher performance for a comparable or narrowly higher price, and especially competition from fast growing inkjet printers which appeal to the average customer with a very attractive cost per page. In terms of inkjet CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System) the competition was heightened in WEU, where the total inkjet CISS market continued its substantial increase with at a stunning rate of 104%, from about 895k units in 2019 to approx. 1.8 million units in 2020. The increase was due to immense growth for HP (from 75k to 744k units due to the introduction of four brand new CISS models in 2020) and Canon (from 80k units to 162k units), both behind top Epson with 909k units (an increase of 25%).

However drawing a conclusion from the market in FY 2020, in terms of attractiveness for the customers, toner SFP can still offer for a low price the capability to print with enhanced sharpness, high quality, accuracy, neatness, cost-efficiency and often at a faster pace than inkjet printers.

Contact

infosource

Petr Kramerius, Regional Manager
Phone: +420 607 887 117
e-mail: [email protected]


TABLE 1 – EEU SFP MARKET BY REVENUE INCREASE/DECREASE OF SPEED CATEGORIES

BW 1: 0-19 32%
BW 2: 20-29 36%
BW 3: 30-39 9%
BW 4: 40-59 -17%
BW 5: 60-89 -40%
BW 6: 90+ -40%
Col 1: 0-9 27%
Col 2: 10-19 -35%
Col 3: 20-29 -32%
Col 4: 30-49 -27%
Col 5: 50+ -11%

TABLE 2 – RUSSIA SFP MARKET BY REVENUE INCREASE/DECREASE OF SPEED CATEGORIES

BW 1: 0-19 23%
BW 2: 20-29 45%
BW 3: 30-39 44%
BW 4: 40-59 -18%
BW 5: 60-89 -51%
BW 6: 90+ -1%
Col 1: 0-9 -1%
Col 2: 10-19 -65%
Col 3: 20-29 -31%
Col 4: 30-49 -33%
Col 5: 50+ -13%

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