Steven Schnoll scrutinises the past, present and future of print technology

The presentation began with Schnoll highlighting the evident shift. “Ten years ago a successful commercial printer was mostly about sheetfed offset printing. Now any successful former printer calls themselves a cross-media content/communication provider and offers offset as well as digital colour and black and white, variable data and personalisation on multiple delivery platforms, data analytics, wide-format, and fulfillment,” said Schnoll.

The growth in availability of multiple delivery platforms for content in India was portrayed by some key facts below:

·       There are approximately 810 million mobile phones in India.
·       India adds 15.6 million cell phone users in a month.
·       According to Apple Q3 2011 numbers, they sold iPad’s at the rate of 102,777 per day, or 4,282 per hour or 70 per minute.
·       There are over 250,000 print companies in India doing approx. $20 billion annually and employing over three million people.
·       It is estimated the global commercial print volume will have experienced a 16% decline between 2000 and 2010, while digital print experienced a modest increase.
·       In contrast according to the Indian Mirror, the print industry is growing at a compound rate of 12% annually.
·       Marketers worldwide will spend nearly $6 billion advertising on social networking this year up 72% from 2010.
·       Facebook has over 600 million active users, LinkedIn over 100 million, Twitter over 200 million.

Schnoll summed up ‘content’ as the word that will describe the future of print in India. “The business communication workflow of the content process has several elements to it, beginning from the marketing and communication strategy and leading into content creation in various forms of delivery like audio, text and graphics, video and web. Then comes the content readiness and design for both online and offline content through which the content is re-purposed, finally completing the chain through means of production and delivery,” said Schnoll.

Speaking about where the content will be most relevant, Schnoll pointed out that the printing industry is moving away from an analog offset centric reactive market to a proactive cross-media digital value creation model. “People who embrace disruptive technologies in their business model will be profitable growth leaders,” added Schnoll.

Schnoll justified this point of his by presenting projected world-market figure shares according to which lithography will have a 31% market share between 2014-2017 as compared to 34% in 2012.

Likewise gravure will stand at 10% market share for the above mentioned period from 12% in 2012, flexography at 19% from 21% in 2012, and screen printing at 1% from 2% in 2012. The only sector that projected a growth was digital with 31% between 2014-2017 as compared to 25% in 2012.

He marked the following sectors as generating growth in future :
·       Digital Print (Toner, inkjet, wide-format)
·       Cloud Computing
·       QR / TAG Codes
·       Data Management / Data Analytics
·       Augmented Reality
·       SEO / SEM
·       Tablets / Mobile
·       RFID/NFC
·       Web Portals
·       3D Printing
·       Nanotechnology / Nanolithography
·       Security Printing
·       Organic / Printed Electronics
·       Social Media

Providing examples and case-studies Schnoll summed up with a “strong emphasis on embracing the demand for content both in print and digital mediums and looking to niches that are growing such as printed electronics, packaging and textiles."