By Marco Boer
It was a challenging year for wide format graphics printer hardware in 2024. Hardware unit shipments dropped about 15 percent from 2023 to 2024. Most of the decline occurred in sales of aqueous wide format printers, but eco-solvent/latex and UV-curable unit sales also declined.
Reasons for Decline
The decline in sales isn’t due to a single factor but rather a wide range. The simple explanation is that the market is going through a readjustment after having seen strong recovery coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2021 to 2023.
Print shops and in-house users are absorbing the capacity they purchased in the previous three years, with COVID-19 having essentially disrupted the regular replacement cycles seen before the pandemic.
The more worrisome hypothesis is that shifting trends in marketing preferences, plus rising costs for wide format graphics output, is starting to take a toll on new hardware sales.
Brands are shifting more of their communication budgets to electronic communication, moving investments into mobile marketing to have more direct and instant contact with their customers and prospects. They still need wide format print, but there may be less budget available for that communication channel. If this is correct, it is likely to be a long-term shift in demand that will negatively impact future wide format graphics output volume in the years to come.
Another factor in the decline of new hardware sales is likely to be the economy. As the over-30-year-old wide format graphics inkjet market has long been a replacement market, softening demand for output appears to have had a strong effect on demand for new hardware replacements in 2024. Print shops are holding onto their wide format graphics printers longer, and simultaneously large 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 2024, lowering unit sales volumes significantly.
A fourth factor that could be looming is devaluation in pricing power as Chinese manufacturers increase exports of UV-curable printers. While quality, service, and marketing reach are not on par with Western wide format printer manufacturers, the wide spread use of Epson PrecisionCore printheads with Chinese UV-curable printers is providing Chinese equipment manufacturers with credibility that didn’t come as easily before.
Chinese wide format equipment manufacturers have made progress in improving machine and output quality, at equipment and ink prices that are lower than Western manufacturers. Chinese manufacturers have made in-roads into selective regions in Eastern Europe, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. They don’t have the capital resources to establish a European-wide presence, and rely mainly upon dealers—hence their selective regional presence, but the net effect is their presence could start to put pressure on Western wide format graphics hardware and ink pricing.
Note that at FESPA 2025 in Berlin over 40 percent of the exhibitors were Chinese manufacturers, often using Western sounding names. There has been very limited presence of Chinese manufacturers in the U.S. so far, as nationwide dealers are unlikely to risk their long-standing relationships with Western manufacturers.
The 2025 U.S. tariffs on Chinese products are also likely to cause a barrier on increasing the presence of Chinese wide format graphics printers in the U.S. market, but may cause the Chinese manufacturers to pursue sales into the European markets more aggressively. The impact of Chinese wide format graphics printer manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. is not a big factor today, but it is a concern.
Silver Linings
With all these concerns, renewed growth in 2025 is not foreseen for hardware unit sales given the geo-political instability around the world. This is particularly a problem in the U.S. market, which accounts for about one-third of wide format printer sales, where the lack of tariff predictability makes planning very difficult.
There is a silver lining perhaps, and that is the fact that about 60 percent of revenues for manufacturers of wide format printing comes from ink and service.
The instability for the general U.S. economy is leading to higher prices, possibly reigniting inflation, which in a turn could help top line revenues remain stable even as hardware sales are likely to remain challenged in 2025. Total wide format printer manufacturer revenues are expected to remain stable in 2025, and grow through 2030 at four percent annually, a projection that includes inflation.
Total vendor hardware and ink revenue declined slightly in 2024, as the mix of products sold shifted to higher productivity machines due to print provider consolidation. This caused the weighted average selling price of hardware to increase.
Ink revenues declined just slightly, driven in part due to a shift in higher productivity devices, which feature a lower price per liter.
The good news for wide format output is that large-scale events continue to remain strong and tourism and travel are back, both driving the need for signage. In-store retail shopping and dining is also slowly coming back, although many retailers are struggling with finding labor, rising costs, and the ecommerce shopping habits now engrained in customers, which leads to a reduction in available resources for marketing and signage.
While 2024 was a flat year, wide format inkjet revenues are projected to grow four percent annually between 2025 and 2030. This is compared to unit shipment growth of about 0.5 percent during that same period. A portion of that growth is attributable to inflation, and some is attributable to expansion of wide format graphics into more valuable applications like décor printing, one example is wallcoverings.
A Tighter Market
More than 30 years have passed since the first introduction of a wide format graphics inkjet printer. It has been a remarkably steady replacement market for decades, but improvements in productivity across all ink technologies are projected to cause a decline in the demand for new units.
Those units will be more productive, which has a long-term impact of a declining ink per liter price. However, the projected increase in demand of output volume enables wide format printer manufacturers to continue to increase total manufacturer revenues.
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 print 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 forces those Western printer manufacturers to become more efficient. The beginnings of a movement to greater efficiencies through manufacturing partnerships is apparent, and more will occur in the next five years.
The Bottom Line
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
IT Strategies projects total wide format printer manufacturer revenues to remain stable in 2025, and grow through 2030 at four percent annually, a projection that includes inflation. While this number isn’t high, it’s at least moving in a positive direction.
With a number of factors at play, both at micro and macro levels, the graphic arts market’s reaction is not a surprise. The next five years will be interesting to watch.
About the Author
Marco Boer, VP, IT 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 25 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.
Aug2025, Digital Output
