Charlottesville, VA - INTERQUEST, a leading market and technology research and consulting firm serving the digital printing and publishing industry, has released a comprehensive new study of digital MICR printing which provides a worldwide assessment of the current and future state of the market. The study is based on in-depth interviews with large transactional service bureaus, direct mail printers, check printers, and in-house corporate operations in North America and Europe, as well as interviews with MICR printing manufacturers, developers, and distributors around the world.

According to Gilles Biscos, President of INTERQUEST, "The MICR printing market continues to resonate with new developments and applications despite the fact that check usage is declining. We have followed digital MICR printing for nearly two decades and are continually amazed by its resilience. This is a particularly interesting time in the evolution of the market and we felt an in-depth, top-down study was well overdue."

Topics examined in the study include the current and future state of MICR printing at the desktop, workgroup, and production levels, including market size forecasts; trends in the check printing market; MICR applications; the impact of Check 21 and electronic payments on MICR printing; high-volume ink jet printing; the use of color in digital MICR printing; MICR printing in other regions of the world; key technological developments; MICR printing systems vendors and products; and a total cost of ownership (TCO) analyses of desktop, workgroup, and production MICR printers, including cut-sheet and continuous-feed electrophotographic systems, and high-speed ink jet.

"MICR-enabled production ink jet systems are now available from a number of vendors, including Océ, InfoPrint, RISO, and Impika, and others are already in development," said Biscos. "While electrophotographic systems will continue to dominate the market in terms of installed base, ink jet will capture an increasingly large portion of the volume as the check market declines and more check printing migrates from offset. Ink jet will also gain volume from the growing promotional check printing market."

The study finds that the volume of checks produced by large commercial suppliers will decline 6% to 7% annually over the next five years. Unit shipments of desktop and distributed MICR printers will decline as well, but at not quite the pace which will be seen in the production market. From 2008 to 2013 the overall volume of MICR printing produced in the U.S. on production printers with speeds of 100 ppm and higher will decrease at an annual rate of 3.8%.

Digital MICR Printing: Market Analysis & Forecast (2008-2013) contains over 150 pages of text and more than 80 tables and charts illustrating the findings.
For more information, or to order the study, visit www.inter-quest.com, or by calling (434)979-9945.