I had the opportunity to attend the Print on Demand Initiative AppForum in Las Vegas last week where attendance was up 20 percent over last year, to 365 attendees. Many of them participated in a mobile phone poll at the Jan. 26 keynote asking to reveal just how bad 2009 really was by comparing their 2009 digital and offset revenue to 2008.
Many digital printing businesses did well — 67 percent said digital printing revenue grew, and 19 percent reported growth greater than 25 percent. The rest were evenly split among growth rates of 10 to 25 percent and 0 to 10 percent.
In contrast, just 13 percent said their offset revenues grew, and all of them were in the 0 to 10 percent range. The largest category of responses was 43 percent of firms with offset revenues declining by 10 to 25 percent.
Most experts at the AppForum say that the lost offset volume isn’t returning. However, significant opportunities are available to those who effectively integrate digital printing into communications programs using digital media. And that’s encouraging news for our industry.
Are you like the respondents at the conference who saw their digital business grow more than offset? What’s it like in your shop?
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3 Comments
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Why is it that bloggers and other so called “people in the know” continuously ask stupid questions like this and why would you conduct a phone poll to check on how digital vs. offset fared in last year’s down economy and expect anyone to say that digital printing wasn’t growing???
It seems to me that we should be asking other questions like, how can I improve the efficiencies within my current infrastructure to maximize the capacity of my digital presses? or How do I get my sales people comfortable with selling technology based programs? or How do I get IT properly integrated into the production conversation??
Seems like the question is wrong. Maybe it’s because we are still thinking output device and not throughput.
Cliff – thanks for your comments. I found the on-site keynote survey interesting in that it reinforced during tough times digital is still a bright spot. And actually I was a bit surprised that the offest growth even made it to the double digets. The questions you ask are indeed critical. I know we do address some of these areas at our Xerox Thought Leadership Workshops but they would also provide great themes for a full conference track or conference session. Here, instead of a quick snapshot at a keynote, we could dig deeper into some of the challenges and opportunties facing the industry. I’ll see what we can do to incorporate some of these into the programs/sessions we have planned for 2010. Thanks again for your comment.
Digital printing is certainly building towards a tipping point. There’s no doubt it’s here to stay.