Over the past year, a great majority of workers have shifted (and adapted) to working-from-home. As we look ahead, how will this impact printing trends in 2021? Here are a few Mopria Alliance members who offered expert insight on this topic:
Mike Scrutton, Director of Print Technology & Strategy, Adobe
Working from home means more printing on A4 / Letter capable printers, and less on A3 / Tabloid printers. We have higher expectations of the printers we have at home. Home printers must meet the needs of the whole family, and they need more capability than before with higher duty cycles. More pages are printed in a month – “homework” isn’t just for kids! We’re more conscious of the costs of printing and there’s more demand for two-sided printing. There’s also greater demand for ordering printing online – having a service print on my behalf and deliver those prints to a destination.
Greg Shipmon, Director, Channel Development, B2B Marketing, Brother International Corporation
During the shift to work-from-home, Brother has seen a significant increase in demand for our smaller-footprint laser products. We view this as organizations recreating a corporate office within the home, as businesses still need print and scanning products to enable collaboration and communication. Going forward, our industry should look at this as an opportunity to extend printing and secure document management services creating an office in a box bundles concept for the home environment. Yes, the revenue mix and margins per client may change, but selling solutions, new services and thinking differently will help to develop a secure future.
Ingrid Kelly, Strategic Alliances, HP Inc.
Over the last 12 months, the work-from-home equation has changed and remote work is here to stay. The pandemic has shown us that people who didn’t have printers went and bought printers. People who may have had printers upgraded their printers. People’s use of their home printers accelerated, driving a desire for richer experiences and functionality. In 2021 and beyond, the print industry, including HP, is modernizing printing with innovative services, solutions, and hardware that meet the needs of the new normal.
Eric McCann, Manager, Mobile Solutions Marketing, Lexmark
Work from home will require print to evolve and adapt, as we find new ways to accomplish our tasks with the resources available to us. While digital transformation enables many tasks to move from paper to digital, print is still necessary for many business processes and to meet industry compliance requirements. For the most part, we see pages moving from one area of a business to another, with each area finding ways to consolidate pages. This fits well into the device optimization process that Lexmark works with its customers to identify.
Philip Mazzilli, Staff Product Manager, Printers & Imaging, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
The office was transformed in 2020. As the pandemic spread, businesses began to encourage or require work-from-home. As normalcy resumes, I don’t expect a complete return to the old in-office model. Employees and employers realize the financial and productivity benefits of working-from-home, at least part-time. And while home offices were created ad hoc in 2020, in 2021, I expect more businesses to invest in premier at-home setups. Employees will be offered equipment needed, such as small-office printers. As part of the transition to a work-from-home model, I expect printing from small-office printers will continue to grow, while printing to larger copiers will slow slightly.
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