2020 Delivers COVID-19 and Greater Need for Printers

2020 Delivers COVID-19 and Greater Need for Printers

According to Bloomberg opinion columnist Tara Lachapelle (pictured), COVID-19 may just have delivered us all a greater appreciation for printers. “Yes,” she says, “Home printers. Those clunky deskside contraptions of a bygone era, are suddenly making a comeback, and it may outlast this crisis.”

Her opinion was picked up by The Japan Times, among others in the heartland of printer OEMs. Lachapelle refers to a Deloitte report which cites hundreds of millions of people “brought their laptops home in a bag … but left their printers behind!” She opines, “And oh, how we’ve missed them — not for the whir of the machine grabbing a sheet, nor the whoosh of the paper hitting its landing. Rather, it’s because we still print a lot more than we probably realized.”

She cheekily refers to “office mischief” where consumers used to labels for their online shopping returns for home—at the office. “That’s something office workers may have tended to do — shh! I must whisper this part — at the office.”

However, there are plenty of jobs that many office workers, now working from home, and may continue to work from home, that require a printer. Again she cites the Deloitte report that predicts sales of all-in-one home printers — the kind that scan and email — will surge 15 percent this year to nearly $29 billion. “That’s double the annual growth rate that had been predicted before the coronavirus outbreak.”

Lachapelle suggests, that of all the trends that have been manifested upon us during COVID-19, the one that will most likely last is the humble office or home printer.

“The lockdowns showed lots of companies that it’s more than possible to have large portions of their workforce working remotely. And there are signs that many will continue to embrace work-from-home policies, whether as a perk to retain and attract talent or to save on costs.”

It is also true that those offices that have reopened, are doing so in a different way with more open-plan space that can socially distance workers from each other.

Lachapelle points out that this sudden demand for home printers is not necessarily good news for the printer OEMs who need to sell the inks and toners. She cites HP for example which collects just one-third of its revenue yet collects more than half the company’s operating profit from this sector. However, HP’s managed print services, which are focussed on the corporate sector, experienced a 40 percent monthly decline in pages printed from February to April. The home sector is paying higher prices than what you would pay at the office for inks and toners.

Related:

• Report Reveals Impact of COVID-19 on Imaging in China
• Revenue Expectations Slashed as COVID-19 Bites
• Brewer Reveals Impact on Imaging Supplies by COVID-19
• Impact of COVID-19 on the Imaging Industry in India

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