The Status and Problems of Digital Printing in China and Abroad

In foreign countries, digital printing is commonly used to print reports, customer catalogs, corporate albums, business printing, and small volumes of books and periodicals, such as letters, business cards, covers, brochures, and CD covers; packaging and medicine, health products, and gifts are small. Packaging: Can be used for proofing, promotion, testing, distribution, etc. It can also print wallpaper, waistline and lace paper. Digital printing is the complement and perfection of traditional printing and digital printing is not only printing but also includes more value-added content.

Personalized direct mail advertising with variable data printing can increase the response rate of target users by 34%, increase the repeat ordering rate for customers by 48%, increase the average order quantity by 25%, and increase target customer response time by 35%. Sales and Profit Growth 32 %. It is also to see the role of variable data printing in the promotion of sales. More and more industries and business users choose digital printing.

Digital printing has also received attention from the logistics industry. The logistics industry and the fast printing service industry have been closely integrated. Because 80% of the current logistics industry is printed matter, and this can be done through the network transmission at the destination, which virtually saves costs and improves logistics efficiency.

According to the investigation of the US market by related professional organizations, by 2006, multi-version and personalized printing jobs will account for 33% of the commercial printing market, while 78% of print jobs will not exceed 5,000 batches, and annual growth in demand printing will increase. The rate reached 14%. According to the results of the United States investigation and research, by 2010, digital printing methods (including the following digital and desktop technology printing methods) will account for about 20% of the market share in the printing field. According to authoritative reports, the annual growth rate of on-demand printing in digital printing in the world will reach 12% in 2008, variable information printing will account for 20% of the printing market by 2007, and 20% of user requirements will be achieved by 2010. The payment cycle will be within 24 hours, and currently 78% of color print jobs are less than 5000 copies. With the advantages of flexibility, customization, and short cycle time, digital printing has extremely fast growth. The global growth rate has reached 16%, which is 8 times that of traditional printing. The number of installations of North American color digital printing systems is expected to reach 18,700 in 2007, and the print volume of North American color digital printing systems is expected to reach 45 billion in 2007. The proportion of variable digital printing in color digital printing will increase from 16% in 2003 to 30% by 2007.

The Status of Digital Printing Development in China

In China, the digital printing market has a certain amount of demand space. For example, various types of bills are beginning to show a stronger and more individualized tendency, and the personalized printing markets such as telecommunications, postal services, bank securities, and insurance have great potential. In Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and other places, we can see that large and small fast print shops on the street are enough to prove that digital printing has indeed entered our daily lives. The development of digital printing in China has also spawned a number of outstanding digital printing companies. The digital printing companies of various systems, including Speed, Tongkun Digital, Kangwei Digital, Shilang, etc., have developed rapidly in the digital printing field in China.

Although China's digital printing market is large, it is not very mature. Digital shows that the growth rate of digital printing is less than 5%, while the growth rate of digital printing in developed countries is 10%. China's digital printing market is mainly concentrated in the two fields of commercial printing and book printing. 80% of products are still concentrated on tenders. Few manufacturers are involved in the field of packaging and printing. This shows that digital printing has not been fully utilized. Of course, this is inseparable from the performance of conventional digital printing equipment. Most digital presses have a small format (mostly A3 size), and thin papers can be printed. This is undoubtedly the bottleneck for digital printing to play its potential in the field of packaging and printing. For now, the advantage of digital printing in on-demand printing is obvious. However, digital printing can only serve as a good complement to traditional printing, and neither side can exist in isolation.

The development of digital printing in our country is not balanced. The current rapid development of digital printing is Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and other places, while the northeast and northwest regions are developing slowly. Due to the local people's lack of awareness of digital printing, the comparison between traditional offset printing and digital printing has resulted in very low profits for digital printing. In recent years, although people have gradually accepted digital printing, some small color laser printers have had a great impact on the market of large-scale digital printers at a low printing price and have diverted many customers. However, many companies have achieved impressive results in the field of digital printing, and have opened many chain stores in different cities.

After a period of development in some companies that run digital printing, the company's business has increased the number of individualized businesses such as industry bids, recipes, personal postcards, invitations, calendar cards, etc., which have been gradually developed. The customer resources are increasing and the company is developing rapidly. . The main performance is as follows:

1. Book Printing Market There are more and more types of books. The number of books is decreasing. The speed of book sales is increasing, and the printing cycle of books is required to be shorter and shorter. According to relevant statistics, short-run printing of books in China will account for 60% of books and periodicals, and digital printing can meet this market demand for fast and on-demand printing. Traditional publishing and printing are printed first and then issued, and digital printing can be issued first and then printed. Such as a bookstore can do before the shop after the factory has a digital printing machine and online book binding. After the customer purchases a good sample book in the front shop, the back factory can select the book from the database through the network. The boot print can quickly complete the task according to the quantity of the customer's rare order. This can not only eliminate the waste caused by the backlog of traditional printed books, but also eliminate the need for warehouses, and the realization of "zero inventory" management reduces the cost of publishing books.

2. Office business printing market. The prosperity of the market economy and the improvement of the office efficiency of the office and company have shifted the volume of office printing to the direction of less printing, more varieties, and higher speed, and gradually shifted from small offset printing to digital printing such as briefing materials, proposal charts, and feasibility reports. Notifications, tenders, evaluation reports and other transitions.

3. Less printing parts in the printing market. With the improvement of the people’s material and cultural level, people’s consumption concepts began to change. The increase in the proportion of social individual printing increased personal painting and calligraphy photography collections, personal postcards, personal invitations and invitations, wedding ceremonies and so on.

4. Commercial and advertising print market. After the accession to the WTO, the company's commercial activities were frequent, and the number of printed commercial advertising products with a small number of prints began to increase, such as corporate image design manuals, sales advertisements, posters, direct mail advertisements, product samples, product catalogs, restaurant menus, and so on.

5. Securities form printing. Such as books, financial statements, various forms, various securities, documents and security printing.

The traditional printing of brand-new printing in the above-mentioned personalized printing has been powerless. Only digital printing can meet the growing needs of the market, especially in the current situation where China’s Internet is constantly expanding. When digital printing technology and network technology are combined, the network Printing will play its unique advantages foreseen. With the continuous development of powder science and technology and the world economy, the selling prices of digital printing equipment and consumables will continue to drop, and corporate investment will become possible. The production cost reduces the concept of people and the personal printing and network printing are developing. China's digital printing will soon form an industry and will develop faster.

Digital printing has its irrefutable advantages, but as a newly emerged thing, there are inevitable imperfections. The rapid development of digital printing that was once promoted has unconsciously cooled down in front of the market. The traditional offset printing technology has been very mature. So far, traditional printing still has the irreplaceable superiority of digital printing, so it is impossible to quickly replace digital printing. In China, the promotion of digital printing machines is far inferior to that of CTP, and it may only appear on the market with traditional offset printing supplements for a long period of time. Judging from the current domestic market, there are few users who can truly profit from digital printing. Some companies have unsatisfactory operating conditions, lack of business sources, and low operating rates. In addition to the defects of the digital printing press itself, there are the following issues to be solved:

1. The concept of consumption. The economic foundation determines that our concept of consumption still stays on the basis of “good quality and low price”. The constant pursuit of personalized and efficient service in Europe and America is not so important here, which makes the advantages of digital printing further here. Discounted.

2. Technical issues. Digital presses accept layout information in digital form for printing, so how the data in the network or database is transmitted to the press is a key issue. In the whole process of data transmission, the entire layout of printed matter is digitized, the digitization of analog negatives, electronic collation and binding, the speed of IE in calculation, data processing suited to data, the preservation of layout data, and the use of databases. Series issues have yet to be perfected.

3. The price issue. The high price of digital presses is also a key issue that hinders its entry into the Chinese market. From the life cycle of printing presses, Europe has replaced its machines for 5-7 years and the United States for about 4 years. However, many printers in our country often use them for more than 10 years, and they can be used if the old ones can be used. With new equipment, and in the short-term, it is impossible to see the return of profits, printers are somewhat reluctant. The cycle of new technology updates is getting shorter and shorter. Today, equipment that has been thrown away by huge sums of money may not be available until soon after the lower cost products are released. Therefore, printing companies are somewhat afraid of spending money. In addition, small offset printing is flooded with the short-run printing market. China's cheap labor force makes the price of small offset printing products very low. The formation of great competition for digital printing makes it even more difficult for digital printing that can be developed abroad to develop in China.

4. The market is yet to be cultivated. Digital printing is characterized by the need to adapt to small batches of color prints or other on-demand printing. This has become a trend in the foreign printing market. However, in China, this kind of market needs to be nurtured and developed. Because users do not fully understand digital printing, they always use traditional offset printing to judge digital printing products. The discerning eye only pays attention to the quality of the product and ignores its advantages such as convenience and convenience. What is more, digital printing machines and the like have better quality than the traditional ones. The quality of digital printing products is also better than traditional printing. The huge psychological gap after seeing actual products made them very disappointed with digital printing and no longer chose digital printing. This is also a difficult issue for many digital printing operators. It is rare for India to go back once. At the same time, the first-time investors are unsatisfactory because of lack of living resources, and the successors will also retreat. They are not optimistic about digital printing. There are not many digital printing companies in China, and most of them are not large-scale, unable to invest too much money in propaganda. This is also a time when digital printing is not well known and accepted.

5. Digital proofing technology is not guaranteed. This is especially important for digital presses in the mechanism version. The digital printing process is also not mature enough, enterprises still need to increase funds to purchase the corresponding prepress system, color management, proofing and investment recovery can not be guaranteed and other issues still exist.

Although the above problems exist in the field of digital printing in China, as a new type of printing, the market prospects and development prospects of digital printing are indisputable. With the increase of social business activities and the improvement of people’s living standards and consumption levels, personalized printing has become a necessity for people. It can be said that the huge market potential of personalized digital printing and the attractive ratio of investment to production are indisputable.