This Week in Imaging: A Look at Current Expected Growth for the Printer/Copier Market

by Kathleen Wirth · January 24, 2025

This week’s interesting news comes from market-research firm Gartner, which forecasts that global IT market spending will be up a healthy 9.8 percent year-over-year.

Within the IT market though, the printers and copier/MFPs won’t see anywhere near that rate of growth. That’s primarily because of three factors: digital transformation (DX), which supplants paper-based work processes with digital ones; managed print services, which promotes reduced printing for cost savings, and in the home office/small office segment, the near-constant drumbeat that ink and toner are too expensive.

However, there is some good news. For the third quarter of 2024, the worldwide printer and MFP market saw a 3.8 percent year-over-year (YOY) growth in shipments, ending five consecutive quarters of YoY declines, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker.

As for office page volumes, most likely we’ll continue to see a gradual decline or flat growth. One factor that may result in higher page volumes going forward is that many larger enterprises are now demanding that workers return to offices full time, and that may be may mean more printing with office MFPs.

Meanwhile, the world will still be printing plenty of pages. According to IDC’s latest forecast, “…the combined printer/MFP market remains massive, as it is still expected to generate more than 900 billion pages of output annually through 2027,” as noted by — Geoffrey Wilbur, research manager for IDC Imaging, Printing, and Document Solutions.

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Worldwide IT Spending Forecast to Grow Healthy 9.8 Percent in 2025

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