Barclays Capital’s Ben Reitzes today offers up a think
piece on the question of where plain old printing is headed
given that people seem to do more and more of their image sharing with their
smartphones, titled “Is My iPhone Now My
Printer?” Reitzes begins with what seems a statement of the
obvious: "We believe that something is amiss in the inkjet printer
industry and it’s not just the economy. Our research and recent
commentary from players like HP fuel our view that inkjet printer sales are
being negatively impacted by secular forces. We believe inkjets are likely
being impacted by the overall weakness in PCs, which is exacerbated in the
near term by HDD shortages. However, the bigger issue, in our opinion, is the
rise of smartphones and tablets, which now house digital images and can act
as printed pages – consumer pages once printed by inkjets."
