This Month's Spectrum Summary:

(The following is an excerpt from the February 2006 issue of Spectrum, a proprietary monthly briefing published exclusively for the clients of I.T. Strategies, Inc. © 2006)

Competing Technologies Clash in the
Current Volatile Wide Format Arena

This month we discuss the Wide Format outlook with Liz Ziepniewski, Patti Williams and Marco Boer. On the print-for-pay (PFP) side, we see a volatile mix of new technologies eroding the traditional aqueous and solvent printer markets. On the in-house side, aqueous dominates, and this is expected to continue.

Looking first at PFP, a major trend is the invasion of ecosolvent printers. The inks are more expensive than solvent inks, but they can print on more diverse substrates, and do not require sophisticated air quality safeguards.

Now we see UV technology making a strong showing. Among the strengths of this technology: it can print on almost anything; more speed; higher print quality; and inks the aftermarket so far cannot duplicate. Inks are more expensive than solvent inks, but coverage is quite a bit higher. Vendors appreciate the greater ink revenues, although to spur demand they are expected to bring ink prices down. Printer pricing begins at around $200,000 now, but this also typically goes down over time. It is expected they will impact the market for solvent inkjet, but a good bit of coexistence is also likely.

Looking at the still bigger picture, it is felt the major significance of UV is that with development it will set the stage for a lot of the industrial markets that people have been dreaming about for years. It will pave the learning experience. Also, there is a lot of room for growth in current applications, most importantly, in point-of-purchase display where wide format inkjet so far represents only 3% of the market.

On the in house side, it looks like aqueous technology will continue to dominate and grow since users report a high level of satisfaction. Continuing merger and acquisition activity is a sign that the industry is maturing. This may be helpful since larger companies, though perhaps less adventuresome, have greater R&D resources. In short, this volatile scene is a sign that the industry is still young and that as UV and fixed array technologies continue to develop, vast new application areas will be opened up.