Review and summary of the hottest digital printing

Review and summary of the digital printing market editor's note: This paper evaluates and summarizes the operation of the digital production printing market in 2005 (2) project publicity and a series of changes

as the economic growth rate leveled off in 2005, the printing industry also experienced a one-year adjustment period. Although the overall printing demand will decline in 2006, we believe that the digital printing sector will continue to maintain a double-digit growth momentum in 2006

after a strong rebound in 2004, the printing industry continued to grow in the first few months of 2005 with the impetus of economic expansion. However, with the passage of time, its recovery speed gradually slowed down. The survey results of the U.S. Department of Commerce show that the annual growth rate of the U.S. gross national product (adjusted for inflation) in the first three quarters of 2005 was 3.8%, 3.3% and 3.8%. Although some people predict that the hurricane will affect the economic growth rate of the United States in the fourth quarter of 2005, most economists believe that the gross national product of the United States will increase by 3.5 percentage points, slightly lower than the growth rate of 4.2% in 2004

3.5% is still a relatively normal figure in a wide range of areas covered by plastic granulator operation, because the average annual growth rate of U.S. gross domestic product has remained at about 3% since 1990. However, the printing demand was greatly affected by the slower economic development last year. In October, 2005, the American Association of printing entrepreneurs (NAPL) predicted that the growth rate of commercial printing sales in 2005 would not exceed 2.5%, while in 2004, its actual growth rate was 3.5%. As digital printing has seized part of the printing market, it is not surprising that the growth rate of digital printing has slowed down

a year of adjustment

although suppliers all think they have achieved a lot at last year's aiim/on demand and print05 exhibitions, there are still signs that the development speed of the digital printing industry has slowed down, at least for now

products

in sharp contrast to the endless emergence of new products in the previous year, almost no high-end digital printing machines came out in 2005. About five years ago, Kodak and Heidelberg launched nExpress 2100, three years ago, Xerox launched docucolor iGen3, and two years ago, HP launched indigo press 5000 and press w3200; Punch Graphics International brings people Saikang 5000. In terms of monochrome printing machines, OSI introduced variostream 9000 two years ago, but so far, the company has not produced color models

cps900 is a sister model of digital color printing machine. It is a printing machine with a speed of 60 prints/min, which is designed to meet the needs of the middle-end production printing field. In order to maintain its competitiveness in the high-speed digital color printing machine market, Kodak announced that all its nExpress printing machines will increase the speed to 83 prints/min in early 2006. At the same time, Xerox increased the printing speed of docucolor iGen3 to 110 prints/minute, while HP launched indigo press w3250, which is also an upgraded product of press w3200 with a speed of 136 prints/minute. Many other manufacturers have added paper feeding and post press processing functions to their existing equipment. Nevertheless, compared with 2004, there was still less warm atmosphere for the release of new products in 2005

workflow

if digital printing technology can capture half of the commercial printing market, printing suppliers will need fully integrated, end-to-end workflow management solutions, which include not only order input, digital prepress and digital printing, but also all operations that can turn orders into transportation of finished products and goods. Otherwise, transaction management costs will eat up most of the profits of short edition printing. After the recent wave of printing press release, many dealers are full of hope, because a series of new workflow products will be developed to meet people's needs, but they also have a strong motivation to promote existing workflows. This is because the development of new digital printing machines takes about several years, and the investment required for research and development is as high as tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Before the new generation of digital printing technology is put into the market, people need to wait patiently for a few more years

in 2003, workflow became the focus of attention at aiim/on demand and graph Expo, and dozens of companies carefully prepared detailed plans to attract the attention of the printing industry to workflow. They use JDF (work definition format) to change the product categories in the hands of countless vendors. After waiting and longing for a long time, offset prepress workflow has finally made some gratifying progress. In the field of digital printing, there has been no breakthrough in the improvement of workflow. In addition to some old products that have increased JDF compatibility and modular structure, the energy-saving design of indemnificatory housing buildings submitted to the construction drawing design review and filing must meet the requirements of the guidance, the current digital printing workflow system is almost the same as that of three years ago

in 2005, the response of major digital printing dealers to the workflow was relatively flat. At the same time, with the increasing investment of printing suppliers in high-priced and high-yield equipment, their demand for end-to-end workflow has also become increasingly strong

sales of printing machines

in general, dealers of digital printing machines are eager to publish their product installation statistics, at least when their sales are very optimistic. In particular, Xerox has released a large number of product sales figures in the past few years. These are its flagship products in the market, including docutech to docucolor production lines. In the first two years after the launch of nExpress 2100, Heidelberg and Kodak regularly upgraded the units they sold. In addition, HP and punch also released the sales and installation data of indigo and Saikang printing presses respectively

however, the tradition of this industry changed last year, and many sellers chose silence in 2005. At the end of 2003, Xerox announced that it had sold 100 docucolor iGen3 printers in the first year of its launch, and they were confident that they would install 400 to 500 docucolor iGen3 printers in 2004. However, last year, the company did not announce whether their plan was successful. Instead, they said more about the sales of their flagship printing machines. Although Xerox claims that they no longer want to play number games with their competitors, another possible reason for their silence is that the printing press market has been weak last year. As a leader in the digital printing industry, Xerox's situation is certainly not the worst, but all equipment dealers unexpectedly kept silent

financial results

the situation of the digital printing market can be reflected from the income of investors. Wall Street evaluated the entire industry according to the bottom line of profits and advanced traffic, and reflected the evaluation results in the stock prices of major participants

digital printing is the original driving force of the four listed printing equipment enterprises, and it is also the core business of Xerox and Ossi. The revenue generated by digital printing products accounted for one-third and two-thirds of HP's total annual revenue and profit respectively. Although these companies have launched fierce competition mainly in the office field, they also extend their tentacles to the production and printing field. Kodak attaches great importance to the investment in digital and traditional printing systems and software, and wants to make up for its losses in the core photographic film market

from a financial point of view, 2005 was the most difficult year for the digital printing industry. Although Xerox's stock price surpassed the Dow Jones industrial average at the end of 2004, its stock price returned to the same level as the Dow Jones industrial average in mid-2005 after the company announced that its profit target for the first half of the year had not been achieved. Ossi is another pure digital equipment supplier. It has not encountered the same situation as Xerox. In the past two years, Ossi's stock price has fallen by about 10%. Although Hewlett Packard showed signs of recovery at the end of 2005 under the leadership of new managers, the company's stock has also suffered a lot in the past two years due to the poor management of its computer business. Kodak invested in the image field mainly because they had a very optimistic estimate of this market at the end of 2004. However, with the change of the situation in 2005, people increasingly felt that these newly developed markets could not help Kodak overcome the difficulties caused by the sluggish photographic film industry

analysis and prediction

all these signals indicate that the growth rate of digital production printing slowed down in 2005. In fact, through the analysis of the preliminary statistical data of the third quarter of 2005, strategies on demand believes that the digital printing output increased by 16% last year (2005), which is lower than the expected growth in 2004. However, compared with the growth rate of 2% to 3% in the whole printing industry, its development has been very gratifying

in the past two years, the hot spot of people's investment in the printing industry is the digital printing press, and they particularly favor the printing press with higher productivity and lower printing cost. Due to the high flexibility of digital printing in the publishing and commercial printing market, these digital printing machines are expected to capture a larger market, but so far, this market is dominated by traditional printing technology. Digital printing is a long-term undertaking. The installation of these new printing machines may require about 110.2 billion yuan of market space for plastic parts of household appliances in China every year, which will take more than a year. In 2005, the digital printing market continued this trend. At the same time, due to the reduction of the demand of the whole printing industry, people maintained a cautious attitude towards investment in the first half of last year, and almost did not take any major action

at the beginning of the new year (2006), the output problem seemed to have been solved by itself. Affected by the downturn in the economic situation, digital printing will accelerate the pace of seizing the digital publishing and commercial printing market from offset printing. According to strategies on demand, the company predicts that by 2010, the compound annual growth rate of digital printing output will reach 16%

there is still much room for growth in digital printing, especially in the field of color printing. The output of digital color printing press in 2005 was still very low. As we said before, digital color printing has just reached the level of monochrome printing ten years ago

people usually use curves to describe the life cycle of a product or a technology. This empirical curve shows the cumulative output of a product from the beginning to a specific period of time. If the cumulative printing volume is replaced, digital color printing will be at the bottom of this empirical curve, while digital monochrome printing will rise along the slash<