The brightest spot in the overall worldwide hardcopy peripherals (HCP) market during the third quarter of 2012 (3Q12) was wireless devices, with its showing of 2% year-over-year growth in a challenging economic environment.
According to the International Data Corporation (www.idc.com), total worldwide hardcopy unit shipments declined 12.7% year-over-year to nearly 27.4 million units, the fourth consecutive quarterly decline.
Despite a contraction of 15% year over year, inkjet remains the dominant technology with 16.7 million units shipped and a 61% share of the total HCP market in 3Q12. The wireless inkjet segment in mature markets continued to exhibit growth, resulting in 1% year-over-year gain in the third quarter of 2012.
Laser declined 8% year over year in 3Q12 to 9.6 million units resulting in a 35% share of the total HCP market. The wireless laser segment experienced year-over-year growth of 9% and 22%, respectively, in the emerging and mature markets.
The monochrome laser market declined 9% year-over-year to 7.9 million units.
This was the lowest year-over-year growth for monochrome laser in any quarter since 3Q08. The color laser segment declined 3% year-over-year to 1.7 million units in 3Q12.