The latest figures from market intelligence company CONTEXT show signs of recovery for parts of the 3D printing market following a period of falling hardware sales.
Published yesterday, the report details a global surge of +68% in Personal desktop printer shipments and a +24% second quarter sequential rebound in domestic unit shipments of Industrial printers (priced at $100K +) in China. CONTEXT says the trends "give hope to an otherwise depressed 3D printer market," which saw hardware revenues fall by -27% compared to the previous year.
“As China came back on-line in Q2 2020, so too did demand for Industrial printers”, said Chris Connery, VP of Global Research at CONTEXT. “While overall shipments improved slightly from Q1 to Q2 thanks mostly to a bounce back in China, they remained very low in Western markets resulting in total shipments in the class down -38% from a year ago.”
CONTEXT adds that Chinese vendors reported not only seeing shipments rise compared to Q1 but even higher shipment rates compared to a year ago.
With the exception of German metal 3D printing leader SLM Solutions, almost all non-Chinese top 20 Industrial printer companies saw significant year-on-year declines in number of units shipped, with most citing a double-digit year-on-year drop in shipments from a year ago. While some vendors reported a slight sequential rebound in shipments, the biggest success stories were from China-based 3D printer manufacturers UnionTech, Farsoon and HBD, which saw not only a sequential rise in shipments but greater shipment totals than last year.
Industrial printer sales were already struggling pre-pandemic but CONTEXT says vendors are noting renewed interest following the important role 3D printing played during the COVID crisis. While the demand for new systems slowed, current printers were put to work plugging supply chain gaps or printing COVID-related products such as swabs and face shield bands. CONTEXT believes this heightened attention around the benefits of additive manufacturing (AM) could have helped serve as a proof point for the technology in other industries going forward. It echos similar comments made in a CONTEXT presented panel session with MakerBot back in August where the desktop AM company's CEO Nadav Goshen argued that the pandemic has given companies who may have otherwise been unfamiliar with additive, a sense of AM's flexibility and advantages. Goshen said, “We’ve proved as an industry that additive manufacturing can foster a change in a very quick way. I think that's what will stick, that additive manufacturing is the most agile way to come up with new products.”
Elsewhere in the market, shipments of Design ($20K–$100K) and Industrial class machines dropped as capital expenditures and key industries such as dental were put on hold amid coronavirus-related challenges in the U.S. and Europe, where 78% of Design class printers were shipped. As Western markets slowly began to re-open in June, demand rebounded in turn but unit-volume shipments were still down -34% on the previous year. These difficulties were evidenced in layoffs at segment leaders 3D Systems and Stratasys as the companies shifted to new strategies. Stratasys did however launch a new Design class printer during this period, the J55, which has already been adopted by a number of design and technology companies such as Syqe Medical.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, the switch to work from home scenarios led to some good news for Professional class printers ($2.5K–$20K). Demand for Professional systems remained strong as people continued to work from home, as detailed in CONTEXT's last report published exclusively with TCT. That said, shipments were up only slightly compared to last year. What's perhaps more significant is that the demand for more robust, professional systems has pushed average street prices up, resulting in weighted average prices for these printers rising by +15% since the beginning of 2019 and making the Professional market the only price class to see year-on-year revenue growth (of +7%) in Q2 2020.
For hobby-level Personal printers (<$2.5K excluding 3D printer kits), demand rose as production in China resumed, leading to a quarter-on-quarter shipment surge of +68%. Compared to previous quarters where the kits market has performed better than finished goods in this category, CONTEXT also notes that Q2 was the first period since the beginning of 2018 in which non-kit printer shipments grew year-on-year, up +2% from Q2 2019.
Overall, aggregate revenues from new printer shipments rose marginally from Q1 to Q2 (by +5%) but were down -27% from Q2 2019. While recovery in the West is proving to be slower than some had anticipated, vendors are hoping that renewed interest in the technology from Q3 will translate to Q4 orders. CONTEXT adds that while this final quarter typically accounts for 29%+ of each year’s shipments, Q4 is now expected to account for 36%+. All eyes will now be on the annual Formnext trade show where a lot of those Q4 AM deals are typically made as the event goes all-digital for the first time on 10-12th November.
