Inkjet Wholesale News aims to provide updates on the latest significant occurrences in the field of printing. Whether it’s the launch of a new technology or volatility of market prices, we’ll be here to give you the lowdown on what happened, when it happened, and what it means!
3D Printing Market to Be Worth $21 Billion within Four Years
The world is gradually moving towards Additive Manufacturing or 3D printing. We’ve said it before and you’ll probably hear us say it again in the future. We’ve even tried to show you the rate at which the 3D printing market has grown in recent years. However, the numbers in that post mostly revolved around desktop 3D printing and not the entire market as a whole.
Now, the findings of a study conducted by the United Parcel Services (UPS) and the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) show that it isn’t only the desktop 3D printing market that is growing at a tremendous rate but the whole 3D printing market.
The findings suggest that the entire 3D printing market will double within the next two years and triple in another couple. This means that, by 2020, the 3D printing market will grow 300 percent!
Moreover, if we combine these projections with previous numbers, then this means that between 2013 and 2020, the 3D printing market will have grown by no less than five times!
Currently, the 3D printing market is valued at about $7.3 billion. It is expected to be valued at $13 billion in 2018 and, by 2020, this market will be worth a whopping $21 billion. The growth is tremendous if we go back into the past because in 2013 the 3D printing market was worth only $4billion.
In the last few years, the 3D printing market has grown at a rate of 30 percent on a year on year basis. This growth rate is expected to grow in the coming four years and it may even rise owing to costs of production dropping in the 3D printing market dropping in conjunction with potential applications rising.
Not only does the study reveal the rate at which the 3D printing market will grow in the near future but also its current state. For instance, according to the study, the 3D printing market is currently centred on western countries located in North America and Europe.
Western countries account for about 68 percent of the global 3D printing market with 40 percent for North America and 28 percent for Europe. The second most important region for additive manufacturing is the Asia Pacific region with 27 percent share of the market.
In terms of applications, the 3D printing market is dominated by consumer electronics and automotive industries with both together accounting for 40 percent (each 20 percent). The third largest sector of the 3D printing market is medical devices which accounts for 15 percent.
In this sector, some industries actually rely completely on additive manufacturing. Consider the fact that about 98 percent of the global hearing aids market relies on additive manufacturing technology
The maximum growth within the 3D printing market has occurred in the functional parts production sector. In fact, functional parts production holds the maximum share of the 3D printing market in terms of applications at 29 percent. This is followed by prototypes manufacturing which stands at 18 percent of the entire 3D printing market.
After conducting the study, UPS and CTA released a report containing all these projections. The report is titled, ‘3D Printing: The Next Revolution in Industrial Manufacturing’. The study itself consisted of two parts. The first of these was “in-depth interviews with US companies”.
These companies were chosen because they were either early or recent adopters of 3D printing as a technology. The second part was the collation of statistics and findings of industry experts and leaders. For instance, this report draws heavily from the Wohlers Report that we drew from in our earlier post linked above.
Drop Of 10.8% Noted In Global Printer Sales
While the growth rates of various sectors in the 3D printing market are going through the roof, conventional printing market is gradually contracting. Evidence of this trend has been found by the International Data Corporation (IDC) and presented to the world in its Worldwide Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker report.
According to the IDC report that tracked the shipments of global hardcopy peripherals, the global printer market shipments dropped by a significant 10.8 percent in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year. The report clarified that global printer sales in the fourth quarter stood at 27.58 units.
The decline in sales can be divided into inkjet and laser segments. Inkjet device sales showed a decline of 9.6 percent, while the drop in sales figures of laser devices was much greater at 13.7 percent.
This is a considerable decline in global printer sales and may be a sign of things to come in the future. However, all is not gloom and doom for this sector because the report also showed some positive trends.
For instance, the sale of high end colour laser printers i.e. machines that are capable of upwards of 45 pages per minute (ppm) speed, continued its year on year positive momentum. Contract based sales i.e. sales connected to Managed Print Services (MPS) remained positive as well.
What is notable about these statistics is that of all the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Epson’s performance was the best despite the fact that its numbers remained flat from last year. Epson shipped approximately 4.9 million units with the performance of the L series of printers being the best. The large ink tank printers being marketed by Epson helped the company show growth in the business inkjet segment.
While most markets in the world remained either flat or displayed drops, the Canadian market actually grew. The Canadian market grew by 7.2 percent with the growth divided into 5.5 percent laser and 1.7 percent inkjet segments. Canadian market was led by Brother, HP, and Samsung.
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