Hardcopy Peripherals Shipments Continue to Show Modest Growth

The worldwide hardcopy peripherals (HCP) market grew 0.7% year over year with more than 23.3 million units shipped in the second quarter of 2017 (2Q17), according to IDC. Inkjet and laser unit shipments both expanded in the quarter, growing 2.9% and 1.7% year over year, respectively.

HP remained the top HCP company with 1.3% year-over-year shipment growth. Second-ranked Canon, third-ranked Epson, and fourth-ranked Brother also saw positive year-over-year growth, while fifth-ranked Samsung declined 5.7% year over year.  Monochrome laser 21-44 ppm devices recorded year-over-year growth of 19.1% in unit shipments. The double-digit expansion was helped by strong performances from the top companies, especially HP and Canon.

Brother enjoyed the largest year-over unit gain, increasing 4.6% to more than 1.7 million units shipped. This was largely due to its strong growth within the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) region where it changed its channel strategy to provide a wider range of products to its office automation channel partners.

HP enjoyed 1.3% year-over-year growth in global shipments with a particularly strong performance in Western Europe and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan). HP's growth was propelled by an online promotion event and the expansion of tier-three channels that had allowed it to capture the growth in demand from the significant increase of new businesses in the SMB segment.