News

DataMaster helps laser MFP sales rise despite overall decline in printing

05 March 2014

According to figures from Context, the UK market research company, printer sales fell in Western Europe by 4% in 2013.  Despite this, in the countries in which DataMaster has the most sales team subscribers, laser multifunction copier sales rose by nearly 8% in the same period!

All other categories' sales fell in 2013.  Inkjet MFP sales fell by 3% (in terms of units), laser printers by 9% and inkjet printer sales fell by no less than 12% year on year.

Despite the overall trends, there are some geographical exceptions.  The French market rose by 5% in all categories related to printing equipment (excepting inkjet printers).  In Belgium overall sales were up 8%.

The Context report reveals that figures from France have been bolstered by laser MFP sales.  We are not at all surprised.  We are based in France, and in our home market a high proportion of MFP sales teams are armed with our DMO sales tool, and many have been trained by DataMaster too. We know that despite very difficult times in France, MFP sales based on Solutions tied to customer projects have been leveraged from the broad adoption of new document management and other processes. 

Markets in most of the other countries covered in the report have stayed neutral or declined.  The UK was down 8%,  Germany by 5%, Italy by 3% - and the overall market in Austria fell by 10%.  Spain and Switzerland stood still.  HP and Samsung printing equipment sales fell by 6 and 5% respectively in 2013.  Whilst Xerox and Kyocera managed to tread water, other brands have had remarkable success as we pull out of the global recession:  Canon sales were up 28% year on year, and Brother, Oki, Ricoh and Dell have shown positive results.