In the inaugural report for its new Asia/Pacific Document Solutions Research Service, IDC estimates the market (for hardcopy peripheral vendors) for Document Solutions in Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) to be worth $94.3 million in 2005, growing almost 80 percent over 2004. IDC finds the APEJ document solutions market to be young and poised for sustained high growth from 2006-2010 as hardcopy peripheral manufacturers seek new ways to compete effectively.

"Demand for document solutions will grow as businesses across the region strive to improve document-based workflow in a business environment that is still heavily dependent on paper. This, coupled with the manufacturers' active efforts to add differentiating value to their hardware, will be the key growth engines for document solutions," says Edwin Han, Senior Research Manager for IDC's Asia/Pacific Document Solutions Research. 

IDC believes the smaller manufacturers are now beginning to feel a significant competitive squeeze as they have tended to rely much more heavily on hardware-only business strategies than their bigger, more sophisticated competitors. As a result, in order to hold market share, they are aggressively embarking on document solution programs of their own - something they have not done in the recent past. Many of these smaller manufacturers are beginning to build the necessary competencies and resources to sell and market document solutions.

The bigger, more dominant manufacturers like Fuji Xerox, Canon, HP and Ricoh, who already are in the document solutions game, are getting more active in marketing document solutions, as competitive pressures reduce hardware revenue and profit growth opportunities. 

The Asia/Pacific hardcopy peripheral marketplace is highly competitive - not just in hardware, but in the total cost of ownership. The market is only going to get more competitive as the hardcopy peripheral manufacturers try to out-do and out-sell each other.

Regulatory compliance, improved records management, and the insatiable needs of driving costs down and workplace efficiencies up are other key factors that will drive document solutions adoption. The growing content management software market is also helping to drive demand for document solutions.

IDC defines document solutions as software applications and professional services that are integrated, "bundled" or in some way work with hardcopy peripheral hardware to enhance its functionality. IDC's definition explicitly excludes hardware, which is covered separately by IDC's Asia/Pacific peripherals tracker research. Examples of document solutions software applications include bill or transactional printing applications, document distribution and management applications, output management applications and security applications. Examples of document solutions professional services include hardcopy device infrastructure design, operations and needs assessments, benchmarking services, project management; system integration; and implementation services.

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