IDC says vendors will drive growth in managed print services market

According to IDC, the managed print services market in the Asia Pacific region will grow as vendors move into mid-market and offer value-add solutions.

IDC says the Managed Print Services (MPS) and Basic Print Services (BPS) market in the Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) region grew 16.4% year-on-year in 2013 to reach US$2,693.5 million.

ANZ had a managed print services market revenue of US$551.4 million in 2014, and was the second largest market in the region overall.

Australia and South Korea continue to be the two key drivers in this region contributing approximately 48% of the APeJ market.

IDC says growth is likely to continue as MPS vendors are moving into the mid-market for new opportunities, and beginning to include value-add solutions to customers.

"There are plentiful of MPS opportunities out there. Vendors, however, need to know which ones to capitalise on by clearly identifying their target audience, service/solution offering and value proposition prior going into any MPS engagement," says Junhua Sia, IDC Asia/Pacific senior market analyst for imaging, printing and document solutions (IPDS).

"By doing so, they can then clearly differentiate themselves from the other vendors and have a higher chance of winning the deal," says Sia.

MPS was traditionally targeted at enterprise customers, but businesses are seeing opportunities in the small and medium businesses (SMBs) segment and are moving into this space, despite the smaller revenue size.

Growth in this segment is faster than the enterprise segment in countries such as Australia and Singapore, says IDC.

To attack the SMB segment, MPS vendors are collaborating with channel partners to provide watered-down or standardised MPS packages to the end customers.

Channel partners, however, are not limited to the traditional printer/copier providers, says IDC.

They can be IT services providers with no prior experience in print. In this situation, the MPS vendors will be working more closely or directly with the end customers.

Besides just providing print management, MPS vendors can look at incorporating solutions in the MPS contracts as a value-added to customers.

IDC says using the 'intelligent' multifunction device as a centre-piece in the print environment, MPS vendors can install third party or their own proprietary solutions onto them.

Furthermore, some of these solutions could help automate or optimise business processes, manage digital information, and work with cloud and mobile technologies, with the objective to provide end-users higher business efficiency.

Examples of these solutions are Canon's I.R.I.S and Therefore, Xerox's Workflow Assessment Services, HP's Autonomy, and Ricoh's collaboration with Laserfiche.