Small devices accounted for 96 percent of the digital printer import market in 2015-16, according to industry bible Pulp & Paper Edge.
More than 2.1 million digital printers under 50kg were imported into Australia in 2015-16, dwarfing their larger counterparts which comprised only 90,052 imports.
73 percent of all digital printer imports in 2015-16 were devices under 10kg, which are used in homes and small offices; the next category, devices between 10 and 50kg, are used in small and medium businesses. These figures comprise both single-function and multifunction printers, and represent a shift in the market towards small-office, home-office (SOHO) type devices.
"What we’re seeing is a significant longterm switch, probably permanent, away from what was once commercial printing towards home and small office printing," said Pulp & Paper Edge's Tim Woods. "You can see that in two things – the rise of small digital devices, and the continuing rise, proportionally, in the use of reams of precut paper, relative to reels and sheets that are used almost exclusively in commercial printing."
Large commercial digital printers, which weigh over 500kg, accounted for just 0.01 percent of devices imported in 2015-16 - slightly less than 600 in total. Woods warns that this data indicates a decline in large-scale commercial printing, the role of which is increasingly being taken up by home and small business devices. "This is not a moment-in-time thing, this is a long term trend," Woods said. "Much like we saw newsprint demand begin to decline and continue to decline, we’re now beginning to see the decline in commercial printing in this kind of data, led by the rise in self printing devices. The things that people can print at home or in their small businesses, they are now doing in place of what once used to be commercial printing activity."