The brightest spot in the overall worldwide hardcopy peripherals (HCP) market during the first quarter of 2009 (1Q09) was color laser multifunction peripherals (MFPs). It registered a strong showing of 6% year-over-year growth in a challenging economic environment. According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker, the overall MFP market has fared much better than the single function printer market, as products continue to make the transition towards multifunction.

Total worldwide hardcopy unit shipments declined 18% year over year to 26.4 million units, while shipment value fell 21% to $12.8 billion in 1Q09, the third consecutive quarterly decline. "IDC continues to expect a recovery for the HCP market in early 2010," said Phuong Hang, program manager, Worldwide Hardcopy Peripheral Trackers. "IDC expects that vendors will employ several strategies to weather the current economic downturn. The battle will continue in the channel to gain go-to-market strength and capacity. Vendors will also focus on offering cost cutting and/or productivity enhancements to customer's existing document infrastructure as well as driving managed print services."

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The MFP market remains the dominant product type in the overall hardcopy peripherals market with a 62% share and 16.3 million units shipped in 1Q09. MFPs were the least impacted of the product types with -10% year-over-year growth. The single-function printer market was hard hit again with a -28% growth rate resulting in shipments of 9.9 million units as the market continues to move towards MFP devices. The color laser MFP market was the only segment with year-over-year growth (6%), resulting in a 1Q09 market size of 632,000 units.

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