By Marco Boer
Running a wide format print business is more complicated than ever. Changing patterns in order volume due to geo-politics and inflation are leading to order patterns that no longer conform to the norm. Despite this, greater capacity utilization and inflation enabled total industry revenues to grow five percent year over year. A big driver in productivity gains is due to the shift from eco-solvent and latex to UV-curable technology. As the number of wide format graphics print providers consolidates, those remaining compete on efficiency or productivity. Many of the eco-solvent vendors are proactively moving their product line mix from eco-solvent to UV-curable ink technology to take advantage of this shift.
As we look ahead to 2026 and beyond, the geo-political challenges are expected to continue to create a conservative outlook for new capital investment. There will also be consolidation pressure, in part because commercial printers who face continued revenue decline in offset print are becoming more attracted to the profit margins of wide format graphics, despite the low output volumes in contrast to offset print. Wide format application experience is difficult to grow organically, so many commercial printers chose to acquire existing wide format graphics print providers as a means to scale faster.
Despite the challenges, the need for signage doesn’t go away. Businesses continually change and require new signage, events compete for consumer attention and use large scale graphics to draw focus, and the range of applications continues to expand, especially in creative experiential designs that require fabrication.
For example, the 15-story Louis Vuitton building wrap at its flagship store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan took months to design and fabricate. It disguises a multi-year construction project as a giant stack of vintage Louis Vuitton vintage trunks.
Once ideas and capabilities are in place, they are often replicated in other cities and by other brands. Louis Vuitton expanded upon the building wrap idea in Shanghai, China—where there are fewer permitting regulations—and created an over-the-top experiential design of a steamship, driving up sales to their highest level to date.
The more than 30 year old wide format graphics inkjet market has long been a replacement market. Print shops are holding onto their wide format printers longer, and simultaneously well-resourced print providers—often using ecommerce platforms—are starting to consolidate output by shifting production onto high-productivity, lower cost output devices. These shifting trends have hit the lower—sub-$30,000—wide format graphic printer sales hard in 2025, significantly decreasing unit sales volumes.
The other good news for wide format output is that large-scale events continue to remain strong; in addition tourism and travel are back—both driving the need for signage. In-store retail shopping and dining is also slowly returning, although many retailers struggle with finding labor, rising costs, and reducing available resources for marketing and signage, especially as ecommerce shopping habits with no signage needed have become engrained in consumers.
I.T. Strategies projects wide format graphics inkjet revenues to grow five percent annually between 2026 and 2031. A portion of that growth is attributable to inflation, and some is attributable to the expansion of wide format graphics into more valuable applications.
The Bottom Line
The first introduction of a wide format graphics inkjet printer happened over 30 years ago. Since then, the market has remained a remarkably steady replacement industry for decades, but improvements in productivity across all ink technologies are projected to cause a decline in the demand for new units and a shift in product mix. Future units will be more productive, which has a long-term impact of a declining weighted average ink per liter price—even as individual segment ink prices increase.
Consolidation among wide format print providers also adds pressures to the window of opportunity to sell a new device. This consolidation in dedicated wide format graphics printer providers is offset somewhat by the expansion of commercial printers moving into wide format graphics printers in a bigger way.
The net result is that it is projected to become a “tighter market,” meaning there will be less room for the number of printer manufacturers serving this application. Back in the early 1990s there were over ten wide format aqueous printer manufacturers; today there are three. It is a similar situation in the eco-solvent/latex printer market. There are still tens of manufacturers in the UV-curable segment, excluding Chinese manufacturers. The Chinese UV-curable printer manufacturers will directly or indirectly put price pressure on the Western UV-curable printer manufacturers, which in turn will force those Western printer manufacturers to become more efficient. We’ve seen the beginnings of a movement to greater efficiencies through manufacturing partnerships, and we are likely to see more in the next five years.
Despite the shifts in product mix towards more productive, lower cost hardware and higher ink prices, the wide format market will remain a profitable, modest printer manufacturer revenue growth market. Due to the consolidation pressures on both hardware—higher productivity printers—and print service providers, there will be less room for the number of hardware manufacturers serving this market. Acquisitions and partnerships will become more common in the next five years, with buyers of wide format print output as the winners.
Editor’s Note
Limited engagements like pop-up retail shops, immersive experiences with our favorite brands, multi-day concerts, traveling museums—these are prime opportunities for wide format graphics printers. Whether leveraging technologies like UV-curable, solvent, or latex, the capabilities of these printers present productivity and hopefully revenue growth for users.
About the Author
Marco Boer, president, I.T. Strategies, is recognized as a trusted consultant to the digital printing industry. He has a reputation for being able to put complex information and concepts into a context that is easily understood by his audience. With more than 35 years of experience in advising and guiding senior executives of Fortune 1000 and smaller innovative companies to successful business solutions in emerging digital printing markets, Boer has developed a deep understanding of inkjet printing technology and its applications.
Aug2026, Digital Output
