Only 3-5 percent of the world’s printing market is digital. The figures for the Asia region are even lesser. Companies like Hewlett-Packard (HP) are at the forefront of the shift towards digital driving its adoption among larger enterprises and SMBs. Though the global economic crisis has put a spanner in the adoption rate, India continues to be a high growth rate market for HP, says VS Hariharan, vice-president, graphic solutions business, imaging and printing group, HP APAC & Japan. In a chat on the sidelines of HP Graphics Odyssey event in Beijing, Hariharan talks about how companies are going increasingly digital in marketing and branding.
Excerpts:
India and China are clear growth markets for you. What are the major trends that you see in this space?
One of the biggest trends is that people are moving towards short-runs as they are doing more targeted communication. Secondly, Web is being aggressively used. In India, we have been talking about digital for the last several years. If I break-out by category, signage is already very digital in India. All the billboard, posters that you, except for some in the villages, are all printed out of large-format machines. However, on the consumer side, India is pretty much offset. The US has converted a lot to digital, China has also seen the shift towards digital in the last few years. But, the trend in India in the last one-two years is very encouraging. This year, we have sold a lot more Indigo presses in the first few months, than we sold last year.
How much of the world’s printing market is already digital?
On an average, between 3-5 percent is digital. So, there is a long way to go. Asia is only two-thirds of that. India and China are far behind the US. Roughly, 95 percent of the market is non-digital, which is basically our potential market. In value terms, the worldwide market is around $800 billion. And for Asia, that number is roughly around $250-280 billion. So, Asia becomes 30 percent of the worldwide printing market.
What is driving the adoption in the Asia market?
Personalisation is the key demand in the market. The more it is all-pervasive, the growth of digital will be higher. For instance, everybody needs to print a lot of business cards today. And if you are working for a SMB, you need fancy business cards, which stand out. Today, mass campaigns are becoming less and less. People are trying to be more personalised and targeted.
How are sales figures looking in the backdrop of the global meltdown?
In the first half, our Indigo business grew by double digits. The impressions on Indigo grew by 40 percent. We think that we will do better in the second half. We see things stabilising now. Sentiment has gone away and it is more about what is real now. Some of the new presses, new printers that we are launching are going to be more productive, more cost efficient. So, HP will share results for the Q2 very soon, but the last one and one and half months has been very good for us. We are positive about the coming months. We see a clear recovery in China, India, Australia, New Zealand and some parts of South East Asia.
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