Unit shipments of printer hardware to EMEA continue to decline, falling by -4% year-on-year in Q3 2016, according to data published by CONTEXT, the European IT analyst.
“Quarterly unit shipments to Western Europe (WE) precisely mirrored EMEA performance, although this is an improvement compared to the previous quarters, which register declines of -8% and -6% respectively”, said Zivile Brazdziunaite, Imaging Market Analyst at CONTEXT.
The improvement has been driven by an increase in sales of single-function (SF) devices. All major WE countries registered negative performance, except for Italy and Spain, in which year-on-year printer hardware sell-in increased by +8% and +29% respectively. The increase in Italy is due to sales of multi-function (MF) devices, while all printer hardware categories continued to perform well in Spain. Unit shipments to Germany continued to underperform compared to the WE average and shrunk by -11% year-on-year in Q3 2016. Meanwhile, although sell-in to the UK improved, driven by sell-in increase of laser hardware devices, there was a year-on-year decline of -8% compared to -18% decline in the previous quarter.
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) outperformed other regions, and printer hardware unit shipments saw a decline of only -3% year-on-year, following a particularly strong performance of +22% in the previous quarter. Sell-in levels to countries such as Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Ukraine and Kazakhstan registered double-digit performance for the quarter. However, shipments to Russia declined by -21% year-on-years in Q3 2016 and, since Russia continues to account for more than 40% of all Imaging unit shipments to CEE, it was to a large extent responsible for the negative performance of the region.