Ricoh Again Leads with Installations, Increasing Market Share to 42 Percent

Ricoh today announced that it has been named by International Data Corporation (IDC), a leading provider of global IT research and advice, as the unrivaled leader in the high-speed inkjet continuous feed market. For the sixth consecutive year, Ricoh’s InfoPrint® 5000 production print platform has been named the high-speed inkjet market share leader in the United States, according to IDC’s newly published U.S. Quarterly Production Print Tracker. Ricoh’s market share increased from 39 percent in 2012 to 42 percent in 2013, with the next closest competitor ranked at 31 percent.

Released quarterly, IDC’s Production Printer Tracker provides a detailed database of information on the laser and high-speed inkjet market segments.  The report includes data on overall market size, share by vendor and five-year projections.

“In a market that is showing modest growth, Ricoh’s InfoPrint 5000 continues to gain market share every year, which says quite a bit about the reliability and popularity of its production print technology,” said Amy Machado, senior analyst in IDC’s Hardcopy Peripheral Group. “The numbers bear out, year after year, that high-volume printers continue to invest their future in the Ricoh platform.”

“The InfoPrint 5000 has outsold itself every year, and this year we’ve gone beyond the 40 percent mark, which is quite a milestone for our flagship system,” said Winston Liu, Vice President, Commercial Print Solutions, Continuous Feed, Ricoh. “The InfoPrint 5000 is much more than hardware – with an ever-expanding and innovative suite of software and professional services, it delivers a strategic digital investment and has consistently proven to be an undeniable success.”

In the past year, the InfoPrint 5000 family achieved a variety of milestones to add to these most recent rankings, including the printing of 60 billion production impressions worldwide, using up to 50 percent less power than other inkjet systems and more.

Commentary by Cary Sherburne

This is impressive performance on the part of Ricoh in terms of U.S. market share in engine shipments for production inkjet. Ricoh’s Mike Herold indicates that Ricoh InfoPrint 5000 placements are about 50% corporate (i.e., in in-plant shops such as Fifth Third Bank that we wrote about recently), 30% in print service bureaus, and 20% in commercial print/direct mail, so still largely transactional but gaining more of a foothold in commercial print. 

From a worldwide perspective, Canon and Ricoh swap rankings, with Canon leading, but still impressive numbers for both of these production inkjet press manufacturers. 

While market share is important, the unit shipments are also telling. In the U.S. according to IDC, overall unit shipments for continuous feed production inkjet increased by 22%, if my math is correct, and about 5% worldwide. While I don’t have access to the specific markets into which these presses have been sold, the double digit growth rate in the U.S. certainly tells a story about the success of production inkjet, whether it is replacing existing print (offset or toner) or enabling new applications. 

This continues to be an important and transformative area for the industry to keep an eye on.