KEY POINTS:
Here's a scary statistic: each year the world's printers spit out 60 trillion pieces of paper. From the newspaper you're currently reading to the paperback books you buy and the office memos you run off because you'd rather read from the page than from the screen, we generate
enough paper annually to de-forest a good chunk of Brazil. It's enough to give Al Gore palpitations.
Despite the fact that digital storage costs next to nothing, screens are better than ever and printers have doubled in efficiency, the world's print output is still growing by one per cent a year.
We still have an inherent appetite for the printed form, says Gary Cox, managing director of printer maker Lexmark for Australia and New Zealand.
"It's about personal productivity. If it's more than a couple of pages, I print it out. When you take [digital] photos, you'll print them out.
"What we're seeing is a shift from being handed printed materials by publishers and advertisers to generating more of our own. We're sending fewer letters and receiving more documents electronically, but ... printers are allowing us to print our own high-quality photos, home-made greeting cards and documents."
Cox says the availability of information on the internet and the huge growth in laptop sales is fuelling the increase in printer numbers, particularly in multi-function printers, which typically fax, scan and copy documents as well as print them.
Lexmark and researcher IDC estimate that the global market for printers will reach 100 million units next year. This year, around 46 per cent of printers sold were 3-in-1 devices that print, scan and copy. The good old fax is still in demand, so printer makers are including fax capability in 4-in-1 devices, which are increasingly popular.
Being able to scan a document and save it digitally, print some photos on fade-resistant photo paper, send a fax and print out documents on one device is convenient.
The next big thing in printing is to do with networking, making sure your computers, cameras and camera phones can connect to your printer over wireless and fixed wire networks. Wi-fi networking is likely to become a standard feature in many consumer printers, and Bluetooth will be the technology of choice for beaming photos to the printer from your 3.5 megapixel camera phone.
If all you want to do is print out text documents in plain old black-and-white, a mono-inkjet will set you back less than $50, a refill cartridge costing you anything from $8 to $15. But if you want a dash of colour in your printouts and have the occasional need to fax, scan or duplicate a document, a multi-function printer is the device for you. They are so cheap now that you're better off paying the small premium for the flexibility they provide. Still, with any printer, the up-front price can be deceptive.
According to Lexmark, $2 of every $3 spent on printing is spent on printing supplies, those seemingly over-priced cartridges we need to buy with alarming regularity. That's how the likes of HP, Lexmark, Epson and Brother make their money, often selling their printers at a loss.
- HERALD ON SUNDAY