Color Printers Drive worldwide Page Printer Market to 19 Percent Growth in 2005

Gartner: Worldwide page printer shipments exceeded 21.4 million units in 2005, a 18.6 percent increase from 2004 shipments of 18.1 million units. Color page printer shipments totaled 3.1 million and increased 44.3 percent in 2005, while monochrome page printer shipments reached 18.4 million units, up 15.1 percent from 2004. Vendors experienced significant growth in the color page printer market due to aggressive pricing, as the average selling price of these devices declined 21 percent in 2005. Monochrome page printer shipments remain strong due to the growth in small and midsize business (SMB) and remote workers that need inexpensive printers. Hewlett Packard continued to lead the worldwide page printer market, as it accounted for 49 percent of all printer shipments in 2005 (see Table 1). HP adjusted pricing of low end monochrome lasers to stem their losses, focused on upgrading their current monochrome install base to new networked printers and expanded their color page printer offering. Table 1 worldwide: Page Printer Vendor Shipment Estimates, 2005 (Thousands of Units)

Company	2005 Shipments	2005 Market Share (%)	2004 Shipments	2004 Market Share (%)	2004-2005 Growth (%)
Hewlett-Packard	10,527,966	49.0	8,828,405	48.7	19.3
Samsung Electronics	1,874,820	8.7	1,901,933	10.5	-1.4
Lexmark	1,268,089	5.9	1,131,213	6.2	12.1
Brother	1,178,039	5.5	1,018,642	5.6	15.6
Canon	1,154,203	5.4	909,492	5.0	26.9
Other Vendors	5,468,926	25.5	4,322,420	24.0	26.5
Total	21,472,043	100.0	18,112,105	100.0	18.6

Source: Gartner Dataquest (February 2006) Mature markets grew at low double digit rates while emerging market grew at significantly higher rates demonstrating the broad strength in the page printer market .Page Printer Market Publ 2006022