Mass Market Scanners: Maturation or Saturation?

A third of all PC-owning households in the US own a scanner - this is bad news for scanner makers.

The US accounts for 40 per cent of all mass market scanner sales and Western Europe soaks up another 40 per cent. With both markets reaching maturity, scanner sales will fall next year from this year's projected worldwide revenues of $3.1bn, market research firm InfoTrends says.

The US market will decline 1 per cent a year through to 2006. Western Europe will grow 4 per cent this year and then stay flat until 2006. Rest of the world sales will grow 4 per cent a year through Infotrends' forecast period.

In 2006 scanner revenues will ease to $2.6 billion and total shipments for the year will be 24.7m units.

HP sells more scanners than anyone else in Europe and North America. It competes with Agfa and Canon in Europe and Umax and Visioneer in North America.

So how will other digital imaging devices - digital cameras, photo kiosks and suchlike - affect scanner scales? InfoTrends hedges its conclusions: on the one hand, they will compete against consumer scanners; on the other hand, they "also help to drive the worldwide consumer digital imaging market by increasing awareness of digital imaging and its applications". ®