Asian toner market growth soars

HARDWARE: With the rapid growth in Asian economies spearheaded by China and India, the regain will account the highest print and toner market in the global economy.

Business Manager Consumer inkjet., Asia Pacific/Japan, Hewlett Packard, (HP) Jun Juntilla at the 'Print Watch Live' seminar said that the negative impacts in the region have not had nay negative impacts for their markets.

Though the region has conflicts, low literacy and IT knowledge levels in some countries in addition to low PC penetration the markets are growing in Asia. "Over 60 percent of HP toner market is from Asia Pacific." he said.

The region is also price sensitive. This has led to some using refilled cartridges. However the trend is fast changing and more customers are using single use cartridges as they save money on the long run, he said.

He also said that the growth in Sri Lanka too is very encouraging and there is trend building up not to re-use print cartridges.

When a company uses a refill and print several documents if one fades or discolors the whole set has to be re-printed.

This takes additional time and time is money. This has been realised by Asian companies who are now switching to single use cartridges.

Revenue from the shipments of ink-jet cartridges in Asia Pacific increased from US $ 3.8 in 2004 to 4.5 billion in 2005. The units shipped increased from 275 million to 315 million during the period. It is estimated that revenue would increase to around US $ 7 billion by the end of 2009 and units around to 500 million. The global ink-jet shipment revenue is expected to be around US $ 32 billion in 2009.

Hp the largest IT company in the world also introduced their latest Colour LaserJet 2605 Print series last month, which has the fastest printing speed of 10 pages per minute and 12 pages in black and white. The models are included with automatic two-sided printing, built-in 10.100 networking, photo memory card slots and an additional 250-sheet tray to produce bright and vibrant prints.