Printer market share worldwide by vendor 2015-2021

In the year to March 2021, Hewlett Packard (HP)'s share of global printer shipments stood at 24.5 percent, with Canon taking a 17.7 percent share of the market. HP 's market share has seen an increase of over four percent when compared to the same period in 2018.

Printer history

The first electronic printer was introduced to the market by Epson in 1968. The widespread demand for faster speeds for home printing would later lead to the development in 1984 of the first low-cost laser printer, the HP LaserJet, which is said to have set off a revolution in printing known as desktop publishing. HP Inc continues to lead in the market for large-format printers worldwide. By 1990, most simple printing tasks were conducted on personal computers and laser printers. By the following decade, high-quality printers with Inkjet systems had become commonplace. As of 2019, ink jets made up 5.1 percent of the entire market for computer peripherals.

Hardcopy peripherals

A printer is a hardcopy peripheral which can create human-readable representations of graphics or text on paper or other physical media. In 2019, there were 94.35 million units of hardcopy peripherals, including printers, copiers, and multifunctional systems, shipped worldwide. While printers are now mostly used in computing and information technology, recent years have seen the development of 3D printing for industrial purposes. The 3D printing market continues to grow and is projected to reach a value of around 12.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, reaching 37.2 billion U.S. dollars by 2026.