Printing trends 2016

–Balaji Rajagopalan, executive director, Technology, Channels & International Distributor Operations, Xerox India, shares the trends for 2016.

Balaji RajagopalanThe printing industry is evolving rapidly, largely led by the growing need for adoption of new technologies. Today, the print providers need to do much more than matching hardware specifications and ensuring high quality output; options like printing from cloud, mobile printing, storage solutions etc. have become a must in the MFD space today. Vendors are constantly updating their offerings with new software specifications to meet these growing demands. Software is starting to play a significant role in the MFD market today and will continue to shape the future of the overall hardware ecosystem.

We had realised this trend way back in 2013 and had launched ConnectKey enabled devices which do much more than printing. Few features of the ConnectKey enabled devices include:

• Can print from just about any device from anywhere.
• Documents can be scanned directly to cloud services like Google Drive, Evernote, Office 365 for storage and collaboration – right from the MFP touch screen.
• The new common user interface allows anyone in the workforce to easily connect into the company’s business processes.
• For IT professionals, the common user interface as well as embedded security protection from McAfee allows MFPs to be managed and protected as easily as the rest of the network.
• The ConnectKey MFP platform has an open API system. That means sales channel partners, systems integrators and resellers can develop applications and embed them on the MFP with no additional software requirements.

We foresee more such technologies to be embedded in printers in the coming times. Digital printing is another area in the overall printing industry which continues to show significant promise. Emergence and growth of sectors like photo-printing, print-ondemand, banner printing etc.

has helped the growth of the digital print industry in the country. The total digital market will reach 225% of the 2013 value by 2024, according to a new market report by Smithers Pira. Furthermore, increasing versioning and personalisation has helped make print more targeted to end users which is increasingly important as the digital world continues to become more and more connected. Xerox has a strong presence in the digital printing market with devices that can cater to market requirements across all segments, starting from entry to mid-high to high end. Very recently launched digital presses like C60/70, Versant 80, Versant 2100 and ColorPress 1000i have all seen a good update in the market with already more than 100 units of C60 alone installed across regions in the country.

Moving forward in 2016, we will continue to remain focused on the digital printing market and also strengthen our portfolio in the A3 and A4 segment. We will also be launching some exciting new products in the digital printing market. We have seen good success with the devices launched in 2015 and will look at maintaining this success and further growing our foothold in 2016.