Western European HCP Market Declined in 3Q22

Western European shipments of hardcopy peripherals declined 6.7% year over year to 3.8 million units in the third quarter of 2022, according to IDC. Shipment value increased 7.2% year over year during the quarter to $1.935 billion.

Supply-chain issues continue to affect the market and are not likely to be fully rectified until 2023. Some brands are struggling to meet consumer and business demands while others are taking advantage of their misfortune and are seeing their shipments increase. Inkjet shipments declined 13.92% with consumer devices contracting 13.7% while business inkjet devices declined 15.2%. Overall laser shipments increased 14.9% as some backorders were fulfilled, but it must be noted that the quarter for the previous year (3Q21) was one of the worst quarters on record.

Colour shipments saw a year-on-year increase of 12.9% while monochrome shipments saw an increase of 16.2%. The monochrome A4 single-function printer segment remained the largest segment followed by the monochrome A4 multifunction (MFP) segment. HP retained the overall market leadership with a 38.0% market share even though shipments declined, and Canon was one of the better performers with shipments increasing strongly, especially in the inkjet segment, to take a 23.9% market share.

"Newly manufactured devices are still being used to fulfill backorders across the industry and some are struggling worse than others with their inventories, meaning that those brands with greater stock levels are seeing their sales increase, and the supply and demand issues are likely to continue well into 2023, for some at least," said Phil Sargeant, senior program director for Western European Imaging, Hardware Devices, and Document Solutions group at IDC.

Overall shipments declined 7.2% in Germany with inkjets being the worst affected, declining 13.4%, but these were counterbalanced by laser shipments increasing 4.4%. Shipments in France declined by 9.6% and saw the same trend as in Germany as inkjet shipments declined by 14.0% and laser shipments increased by 9.1%. The overall UK market contracted 9.5% as inkjet shipments declined 11.3% and laser shipments only saw an increase of 1.0%.

The Italian market was one of the better-performing countries with overall shipments increasing by 3.6%. Laser shipments saw a large jump of 51.3% while inkjets, as with other countries, declined by 15.2%. Spain was one of the poorer performing countries with overall shipments down year-on-year by 16.7% and even though laser shipments increased year-on-year by 14.4%, inkjet shipments declined 27.6%.