According to IDC 2012 EMEA page volume generated on home and office digital hardcopy devices is down by -2.3% to 2 million pages. W. Europe and CEE see declines of -3.1% and -3.2% respectively, while MEA is the only sub-region posting growth.
W. Europe accounts for over 63% of EMEA total page volume.
On a global scale 2012 page volume is down from 3.03 trillion in 2011 to 2.98tr, a -1.5% decline caused by a reduction in pages printed on laser devices in developed economies.
"A recession economy and slow business activity, tightening budgets and pressure to cut costs, digitization of document workflows, increasing adoption of managed print services (MPS), and environmental concerns across Europe were the key factors behind the page volume decline in EMEA last year," IDC remarks.
The analysts believes 2 factors affect printing need and page volume dynamics-- economic conditions and subsequent business activity (users print more pages the better business is doing), and the need to print certain documents to process on paper (due to different legal requirements, low electronic document workflow and solution adoptions, etc).
For the future IDC forecasts EMEA page volume will continue declining slowly through increasing adoption of document digitalisation and workflows, as well as growing MPS adoption in W. Europe and CEMA. Africa and CIS countries represent great installed base and page volume growth opportunity within EMEA, as do mobile device owners wanting to print from their smartphones and tablets.
When it comes to vendors HP retains top EMEA page volume share, followed by Canon and Xerox.