Widthwise 2024


Data analysis: Technological outlook


T


echnological change isn’t what it used to be - it’s faster, more complicated and harder to predict. It took our ancestors 2.4m years to learn how to control


fire and cook with it, but we put a man on the moon in 1969, just 66 years aſter the Wright brothers’ first flight. And Apple’s iP-


hone was introduced in 2007, only 34 years aſter Motorola revealed the first mobile phone on a local radio station in America (it was supposed to make its debut on CBS’s breakfast news but, because the show’s makers couldn’t understand why it was significant). And it is, lest we forget, only 31 years since Indigo’s Benny Landa developed the first digital printer. Today, we stand


on the threshold of another technological revolution, full of promise and peril, AI, which, you could say, elevates the Internet of Tings into a whole different dimension. Te findings of Image Reports’ latest


Widthwise survey suggest that British wide-format printers may be suffering from a kind of technological fatigue. Having kept their powder dry in 2023 - 56% said they


Q17. What type of wide-format equipment do you own?


Solvent printer (inc. eco solvent) Aqueous printer Latex printer


Finishing - laminator


UV roll-to-roll printer UV flatbed printer


Finishing - contour cutter UV hybrid printer


Dye-sublimation printer


Finishing - straight line cutter Roll-fed print and cut printer


Finishing - specialist textile (eyelet maker etc) 4% 52%


26% 25%


23% 23% 22%


17% 16%


15% 14%


11%


16 | Widthwise 2024 | www.imagereports.co.uk


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