‘Megatrends in Digital Printing Applications’ Study Findings

For most of the packaging applications, digital printing technology is still in its infancy in terms of technical development and therefore remains in the very early stages of development.

Accelerating Digital Printing

It is worth remembering that there is a general industry perception that digital production printing is already omnipresent, and it is in terms of access and hardware placements. However, with the exception of transaction/financial and book printing applications, the share of digital print out of all production pages for all other applications is in the single or sub-single digits.

A second factor expected to drive growth is gains in market share. It is probably human nature to believe one will gain share in digital production print from other competitive print service providers or, more likely, in-plants whose parent companies are starting to outsource printing.

Barriers to Digital Production Printing

Cost, cost, cost. This is the single largest barrier cited by respondents that is preventing them from moving more volume from analog to digital production printing. The response that digital consumable cost is too expensive received nearly twice the responses of any other barrier. Cost is clearly an issue—an issue that is almost impossible to completely understand as there are many factors that need to be included when calculating the total cost of ownership, or total cost of print.

Despite the ubiquitous presence of digital production printing equipment and awareness of digital printing, we found that only one application—transaction/financial printing—will have tipped from analog to digital production printing by 2014, the end of the forecast period of this study.

Despite the finding that it is not foreseeable when digital production printed pages will surpass analog printed page volumes, the awareness of digital production printing could not be greater. “Every PSP has one” is a common refrain from the nearly 900 respondents interviewed.

To learn more, check out this session at the Vision 3 conference: