The 2007 Lyra Symposium is now just a memory, but before I close up the blog reporting on the conference, I plan to add a few more anecdotes and observations from the sessions that I found noteworthy.
The first of those comes from a Lyra Analyst preso that came during the supplies section of Lyra's Day Two. As a long-term printer marketing type, I always was, and still am, interested in just what those throngs of printer owners were doing with their machines. Going way back to the mid-80's and the early days of the HP (NYSE HPQ) LaserJet, business letters were a very popular application. The "big three" from the office, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, and Presentations, remained at the top for years, but then Web page and email printing crept up as popular drivers of printed pages. Just as predicted, "Distribute and Print" trends could be observed first hand from user data.
Of course, much depends on how the questions are asked, but Grey Held revealed the findings of a recent Lyra study of 265 home laser printer customers in the US, during his presentation on "Laser, Ink Jet, and Media Consumables: Analysis of Market Trends". Respondents were asked to identify their first, second, and third most frequently printed documents, and when the three responses were summed, what category was sitting in the #3 position? Printed Driving Directions at 41%! Text documents overwhelmed all other categories at over 90%, followed by email, driving directions, spreadsheets, other Web pages, news articles (which seem like they must come from the Web!), and finally presentation slides and high-res photos.
Actually when I think about our own home LaserJets, this really isn't surprising at all. Still it's great when the data bear out the new realities!
The first of those comes from a Lyra Analyst preso that came during the supplies section of Lyra's Day Two. As a long-term printer marketing type, I always was, and still am, interested in just what those throngs of printer owners were doing with their machines. Going way back to the mid-80's and the early days of the HP (NYSE HPQ) LaserJet, business letters were a very popular application. The "big three" from the office, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, and Presentations, remained at the top for years, but then Web page and email printing crept up as popular drivers of printed pages. Just as predicted, "Distribute and Print" trends could be observed first hand from user data.
Of course, much depends on how the questions are asked, but Grey Held revealed the findings of a recent Lyra study of 265 home laser printer customers in the US, during his presentation on "Laser, Ink Jet, and Media Consumables: Analysis of Market Trends". Respondents were asked to identify their first, second, and third most frequently printed documents, and when the three responses were summed, what category was sitting in the #3 position? Printed Driving Directions at 41%! Text documents overwhelmed all other categories at over 90%, followed by email, driving directions, spreadsheets, other Web pages, news articles (which seem like they must come from the Web!), and finally presentation slides and high-res photos.
Actually when I think about our own home LaserJets, this really isn't surprising at all. Still it's great when the data bear out the new realities!
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