Canon Financial Report Indicates Shifts in Market Trends

Canon has identified the risk factors that continue to cause the declines in sales of its laser and inkjet printers.

It submitted a 145-page report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission identifying the  challenges and opportunities the OEM sees impacting its future. In the three-part report, the OEM points to MFDs and printing services and solutions for its future development.

Canon states that economic trends in its key markets—namely Japan, Europe and the U.S.—may drastically affect its operating results. The decline of economy in these regions has caused corporate customers to limit capital investments on its office and industrial equipment.

Moreover, the economic downturn is also going to have an impact on Canon’s consumer products such as cameras and inkjet printers.

Canon maintains, “Demand for Canon’s consumer products, such as cameras and inkjet printers, is discretionary. Rapid price declines owing to intensifying competition and declines in levels of consumer spending and corporate investment could adversely affect Canon’s operating results and financial position.”

The report also points out that the growth of electronic devices such as smartphones, PCs, tablets and shifts of attitudes towards the environment also sway consumers away from buying more inkjet printers.

In contrast to declines of prices in its inkjet businesses, its color-model office MFDs achieved higher growth than the market average during 2016, according to the report.

Canon sees the trend has shifted from monochrome to color products and from hardware to services and solutions. Customers are choosing more short-run, print-on-demand and variable data printing over owning a buying the hardware. Connectivity, mobility, security, integration, workflow and cloud-based web services are growing in demand as well.

In response to the shifting trend, in its business machine market, the company aims to optimize print efficiency to cut cost. On the other hand, the company is also going to focus more on Managed Print Services (“MPS”), which will provide more solutions to further eliminate costs and increase efficiency in the office environment.

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