The shocks and changes will far exceed the impact of the "SARS" in 2003 and the financial crisis in 2008. The epidemic has opened a gap in the traditional communication between people and the way people work-keep your distance!

For health and loss reduction considerations, many companies recommend that employees work from home. So these new "SOHO family" opened up a new work experience: the communication with customers and colleagues turned into "contactless" forms such as online video, teleconferences, and emails; documents at work will not be printed and distributed if necessary. , In order to avoid the spread of paper documents to the virus; because the home office is far from the office, the necessary printed documents can only be printed at home, and more data and documents are obtained and distributed through the cloud. The impact of these new changes on the printing market can be imagined.

IDC's Print Peripheral Product Research Report for the first quarter of 2020 shows that in the first quarter of 2020, China’s commercial print peripheral product (inkjet + laser) shipments fell by 25.9% year-on-year. Among them, small companies with less than 100 employees Cargo volume fell 44.0% year-on-year, while shipments of consumer printing peripheral products increased 153.2% year-on-year. The growth of consumer market shipments is mainly driven by the demand for home education and home office. IDC believes that in the second half of 2020 and 2021, as the impact of the epidemic subsides, the growth rate of the consumer market will gradually slow down, but the absolute value of shipment growth will remain high; commercial purchases of large and medium-sized enterprises will gradually resume. And it is expected to return to normal levels in the second half of 2020; while the procurement needs of small companies with a size of less than 100 people will not be able to return to normal levels in 2020 or even the first half of 2021.

In the consumer market, short-term growth is mainly driven by the educational demand for home learning and online classes and the demand for home office. The medium and long-term growth is mainly driven by changes in user habits. Individual users have cultivated the habit of printing at home during the epidemic, and home printing equipment will gradually become one of the household durable consumer goods. Among them, inkjet printers are the first choice of consumer customers. Traditional small ink cartridge printers have always been the mainstream of the consumer market due to their lower prices. With the decline in the unit price of ink cartridge printers and lower color printing costs, the growth rate in the consumer market has been faster.

In the small business market, demand growth in the short and medium to long term is not optimistic. On the one hand, in the short term, due to the weak ability of small companies to resist risks, their operations have been severely impacted during the epidemic, and a large number of small companies have gone bankrupt and closed without purchasing. The surviving small business procurement needs have also been suppressed, and the replacement cycle has been significantly lengthened. In addition, the overseas epidemic has not yet seen a clear inflection point of easing. It is expected that imports and exports will be impacted in 2021, which is still an unfavorable factor for China's domestic economic environment. On the other hand, in the medium and long term, the digital transformation of small companies is accelerating. Service industries such as catering and accommodation, tourism and entertainment, culture and sports are accelerating the development of online businesses. The government also clearly stated in the work report during the two sessions: e-commerce, online shopping, online services and other new formats have played an important role in the fight against the epidemic. The government will continue to issue support policies to comprehensively promote the "Internet +", and integrate digital technology and the Internet with traditional industries. Deep integration, advance the digitalization of the industry, and create new advantages in the digital economy. Therefore, we believe that contactless business activities will rapidly rise, and the development of robotics, collaborative office, cloud services, AR/VR and other technical fields will accelerate, which will continue to reduce the amount of printing in business activities and reduce the demand for equipment. For small businesses, the reduction in print volume means that the daily office printing needs that may need to be supported by a medium and high speed laser printer or copier in the past will only be supported by a home inkjet device in the future, after all, inkjet single-page printing costs are lower , And can take into account the needs of color printing. Even for some small digital native companies, there is basically no need for printing or equipment procurement for online work.

IDC believes that printing equipment manufacturers and consumables manufacturers need to be prepared to cope with the decline in printing volume and changes in equipment demand in the medium and long-term commercial market. In the future, the growth of printing equipment and consumables in the commercial market will be relatively weak. Cloud-based solutions and personalized services may be new business growth opportunities; and the consumer market may become a new blue ocean: Chinese families have a rigid demand for printing learning materials. Because of the use of alphabetic languages ​​in European and American countries, there is no particularly high writing demand. Students can learn through online programs, so family education does not drive printing significantly; while in China and other countries with a large number of Chinese, the demand for Chinese writing is higher. In particular, in the context of the government's promotion of the revival of Chinese culture in China, primary and secondary school students write more homework, and the proportion of language learning has increased, and there is a strong demand for printing. Equipment manufacturers and consumables manufacturers may try to drive the growth of home printing to obtain new business growth opportunities.