The latest infoSource figures for the full year 2020 confirm: Konica Minolta has expanded its market share in Production Printing to 45 per cent in an overall declining market. This makes Konica Minolta the market leader in Germany for the 10th year in a row and looks back on a successful history full of innovations. Konica Minolta also holds the top position in the colour and black-and-white submarkets, with market shares of 47 and 40.3 per cent respectively.
In a market that has declined by 18 per cent, Konica Minolta has managed to expand its share in the overall Production Printing market from 42.8 per cent in 2019 to 45 per cent in 2020, with 1,243 systems marketed. This means that Konica Minolta not only defended its market leadership once again, but also took the top spot for the 10th year in a row. The company also secured the top position again in the declining individual market segments of colour and black-and-white. Last year, the technology leader was able to increase its market share in the colour segment from 44.9 per cent to 47 per cent with 908 systems marketed. Konica Minolta also achieved first place in the black-and-white segment with 335 marketed systems, increasing its share from 37.4 per cent to 40.3 per cent compared to 2019. This makes Konica Minolta the leader in the overall market as well as in the colour and black-and-white submarkets.
"2020 was an absolutely exceptional year and extremely difficult, especially for the printing industry. It makes us very proud that, under these circumstances, we were able to achieve market leadership in Production Printing for the 10th year in a row and expand our market share even further. This once again underlines our technological leadership, which makes us a first-choice partner that our customers can rely on today and in the future," explains Markus Neumann, Head of Production Printing at Konica Minolta Business Solutions Deutschland GmbH.
How it all began
Shortly before the merger of Konica and Minolta in 2003, today's Konica Minolta entered the production printing market for the first time with its Minolta CF5001 and Konica 8050 models and quickly achieved success not only in the high-volume office sector, but also increasingly with graphic arts customers, digital print service providers and in-house printers. The company then realised that a large number of customers had a need for production printing systems in colour and black and white, but were not willing to invest in heavy production printing systems that were previously available on the market. Therefore, Konica Minolta developed a series of systems that addressed this gap in the market with a smaller investment and footprint, while maintaining high print quality and reliability.
As a pioneer, Konica Minolta opened up a new market for light production printing, which it subsequently successfully expanded to the mid- and heavy-production printing segments with ever more generations of model series and new technologies.
With the bizhub PRO systems, which Konica Minolta first introduced in 2004 with the mid-production printing model bizhub PRO 1050, the company immediately took the lead in this segment with the best-selling models in the year of introduction. One year later, the bizhub PRO 920 B/W model and the bizhub PRO C500 colour model followed in the light production printing segment.
These were also very well received by customers, so that the company invested heavily in the further development of new system generations in the following years. The main focus was on customer wishes, further simplification of operation and optimised automation through online finishing and suitable workflow software.
Another milestone in the success story is the 2nd generation of the bizhub PRO C6500 in 2007, with which Konica Minolta set new standards in the colour sector. But Konica Minolta also brought an innovation to the market with the High Chroma colour system bizhub PRO C65hc, which was introduced in 2009. For the first time, the system used toner with more luminosity for more attention-grabbing prints and realised a wider colour gamut. This combined classic toner-based digital printing with the ability to print colours in the sRGB colour space. With the bizhub PRESS C8000, Konica Minolta introduced in 2010 for the first time a system with spectral densitometer, which offered a cooling and smoothing unit with optional paper rewetting. At the same time, the system also featured a large-capacity paper magazine with suction system technology, which greatly increased the range and runnability of printable materials.
In the following years, these technologies also ensured that Konica Minolta was able to take the lead in light production printing models, as they were a unique selling point in the market and very popular with customers for a long time. For the first time in 2011, Konica Minolta, including its second brand, achieved market leadership in the overall production printing market, which the technology leader successfully holds to this day and continues to expand.
With the bizhub PRO 2250P, Konica Minolta entered the heavy production printing market for the first time in 2014. Using a tandem process, the system achieves a double speed of 250 A4 pages per minute and is especially suitable for all printed products printed on both sides, such as books, instruction manuals or package inserts. This was followed in 2017 by the AccurioPress C6100 mid-production printing system, the first Konica Minolta system to feature IQ-501 (Intelligent Quality Care) technology. This consists of two integrated, precise scanners and a colour spectrophotometer that take multiple quality measurements. These include front and back register, various colour adjustments, as well as full linearisation and colour profiling of the printing system. Quality adjustments are made automatically, and register and colour adjustments can be made in real time during the printing process, making even large production runs very stable, reliable and reproducible at any time.
As an extension of the IQ-501, the company presented Auto Inspection Technology (AIT) in 2019, which monitors the print output, detects errors and corrects them automatically. In particular, error checking can also be carried out for variable data such as numbers, barcodes and QR codes. This not only saves print service providers a lot of time, but also eliminates the need for random checks, as only prints that are actually correct and free of errors are delivered, which significantly reduces waste and the number of complaints.
Most recently, Konica Minolta entered the high-volume toner printing segment for the first time with the 2020 AccurioPress C14000 series. The sales figures already achieved with the 200th installation across Europe are all the more significant. And for 2021, the technology leader has further innovations in colour, black and white and software in store for its customers.
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