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Measuring the Growth of Digital Color Printing
May 13, 2008

I was making a presentation yesterday in Virginia about value added opportunities for service providers and was told my data was out of date and significantly underestimated the growth of print on demand (POD) color pages. After the paddles brought me back to life I researched the issue.

In my defense - I am pretty good at keeping my market research up to date. First as staffer at NAPL I have complete access to Andy Paparozzi’s research – which I consider second to none! And second NAPL is a partner with InfoTrends and I have access to their research too. The last data I had from InfoTrends came from the on-demand show which said POD color was growing at 14%. But then someone showed me the latest InfoTrends report that showed that POD color was growing at 30%.

When I arrived back home I went directly to the source. I called Jim Hamilton at InfoTrends. Jim told me that both numbers are accurate and current but measuring two different things. The 14% growth was revenue and the 30% growth was impressions. Actually he said that the 14% was from early data and that the most recent revenue growth is calculated to be 12-13%.

We also talked about how well page growth and revenue growth correlate and he said fairly well, until a large franchise printer drops the price per page which throws the correlation off. So I am happy to report that my market research is up to date and there is more then one way to skin a cat .. or more precisely … more then one way to meausure the growth of Digital Color Pages.

Posted by Howie Fenton on May 13, 2008 | Comments (2)