Big Market

There are a lot of digital printers, possibly something like a billion in use worldwide. About 100 million printers are sold each year. (Roughly, based on Gartner, IDC, company reports etc. Only the manufacturers have accurate figures and they usually aren't keen to release details. HP's own shipments of laser printers reached 100 million in 2008. )

Of the order 80% of those are consumer oriented home and small office inkjets. Most of the remainder are laser printers.

IT Big Brands

Printers might seem relatively unimportant in the computer market where the big brands are Microsoft, Intel, HP, Apple, Dell, IBM, Acer and Samsung. Actually HPs high position in that list is due in no small part to the reputation it made and revenue it gets from selling printer cartridges. Dell seem to have wanted that revenue stream as well. Apple was once quite well known for its printers, but withdrew from the market.

Printer Big Brands

Printers combine electro-mechanical assemblies with one or two fixed-purpose computers. There are something over 60 companies making products. Only a handful of names are well known:

• Brother - with a background making sewing machines and machine tools. Made early dot-matrix printers for Centronics. Makes laser printers sometimes using others engines and sometimes making them for others. Also makes some inkjets. Noted for the P-touch thermal label printer.
  ? 24,000 employees.
• Canon - camera maker that diversified into copiers in the 1970s then printers in the 1980s. Also makes camcorders, projectors, opticians equipment and chip-production steppers. Has usually made the laser printer engines used by HP. Canon are old rivals to HP in thermal inkjet designs. Canon has a long history in calculators and dabbled in the 1980s home computer market with MSX machines. $69Bn revenue, 200,000 employees.
• Dell - broad electronics brand. Michael Dell began making PCs to order from stock parts in 1984 and quickly expanded to continental scale assembly plants. Dell badged Lexmark and later Samsung and Funai printers from 2002 and sells TVs and network gear as well. Dell bought Perot Systems to build a software and services arm.$61Bn revenue, 103,000 employees.
• Epson - Originated as Seiko timepieces who made the Tokyo Olympics clocks including a dot matrix printer. In 1968 Shinshu Seiki Co began making the EP-101 a print mechanism sold primarily to calculator makers. The company name is derived from EP-son. In 1978 Epson made the TX-80 then the improved MX-80 which became a global best seller. Epson made several attempts to sell computers with the HX small form factor series and a range of PCs in the 1990s and are a significant POS maker. Other products are Projectors and LCD chips. Meanwhile they developed the Micro-Piezo technology now used in inkjets. Epson laser printers are often Minolta or Fuji Xerox based. Epson have their own Esc/P2 print language.$11Bn revenue, 80,000 employees.
• Hewlett-Packard- primarily a scientific instrument maker in the 1970s, it spun this business off as Agilent in 1999. HP developed calculators and mini-computer products in the 1970s and inkjets in the 1980s. HP's very popular Laserjet series are mainly based on Canon engines combined with HP's PCL print language. Revenue from print cartridges became one of HPs strengths. HP bought Compaq to consolidate PC market. HP bought EDs, founded by Ross Perot to start a transition to software and services. In 2011 they bought UK based Autonomy, a knowledge engineering business specialising in Bayesian inference from unstructured information. Recently HP spectacularly halted tablet PC production. HP is the biggest brand in printers, with products ranging from photo-printers to the Indigo Press range.$126Bn revenue, 325,000 employees.
• Lexmark - A specialist manufacturer of printers, Lexmark was IBMs mechanical division making printers and Keyboards. Printers badged IBM Infoprint and Dell often have Lexmark engines. In turn Lexmark have quite often used Canon, Fuji-Xerox and Minolta engines. Lexmark inherited some of IBMs mainframe print languages. Lexmark multifunction printers can be used stand-alone to print forms. $4.2Bn revenue, 13,000 employees.
• OKI - telephone and teletype maker developed dot-matrix and then LED printers. OKI printing solutions is primarily focused on business print so they make dot matrix and xerographic printers but not inkjets. Oki xerographic printers have an LED array rather than a laser scanner. Oki also make ATMs. The OKI group aims to be a network solutions provider.$7.2Bn revenue, 17,000 employees.
• Samsung - broad market electronics maker developing a reputation in colour multifunction laser printers. Samsung is one of the ‘ Chaebol ’. Group activities include life-insurance, shipbuilding, gas turbines and chemicals. Samsungs electronics groups started making TVs in the late 1960s. By 1992 Samsung had become the worlds largest memory-chip manufacturer and second largest chipmaker after Intel. The joint venture with Sony S-LCD is the worlds largest maker of LCD displays. Samsung has risen to be the second largest manufacturer of smartphones after Apple. Samsung generally grows directly and avoids growth by acquisition.$173Bn revenue,276,000 employees.
• Xerox - inventors of the original photocopier and the first laser printer. Xerox grew from Haloid Photographic Company's investment in Chester Carlson's invention of the xerographic process. Photocopying took off rapidly and the company name became Xerox. As monopoly supplier Xerox became rich in the 1970s. In 1970 Xerox PARC invented the laser printer as well as Graphical PCs and networking to use it, but failed to capitalise on this - Apple saw the potential, took several of the developers and considered buying Xerox. Xerox itself was weakened by the terms of a 1975 US FTC consent decree which forced them to license technology - mainly to Japanese camera makers. Xerox revived its fortunes by developing digital copiers. In 2000 Xerox acquired the Tektronix print division with rights to Phaser solid ink technology. Xerox bought ACS in 2009 to strengthen their services offering.$22Bn revenue, 137,000 employees.

These are all big companies. The best known brand in print is clearly HP (Hewlett Packard) who have something like 50% of the printer market in the US and a bit less than that world-wide. HP established their name with calculators, mini-computers and printers but they are also well known for desktop PCs, servers and network gear. In the printer market the one to watch has to be Samsung which has vertical market integration from chemicals and electronics to smartphone and tablet users.

There is also a business-oriented market for specialist printers. For instance dot matrix printers were once popular with home computers but are now almost unknown in that market. However there still is a commercial market for dot matrix and other impact technology. Specialist markets are often important. For line-matrix printers are unusual, but the market is large enough for Printronix (the main supplier) to have 600 employees worldwide - they are using their market position to diversify into related fields.

Printing is a field many companies could work in. For instance:

• Bosch - leading producer of automotive components.
• Casio - has made a CD printer and Label printer
• General Electric - Controls division became Genicom but failed to innovate, now part of Printronix.
• Philips - made robust dot-matrix printers in the 1980s but no longer seem interested in printing.
• Siemens - developed piezo-electric inkjets in the 1970s but have now left the computer market.
• Smiths Industries - originated as clock and typewriter makers and were briefly printer makers