According to the International Data Corporation (IDC (News - Alert)), the worldwide hardcopy peripherals market grew 2.6 percent year-over-year with 28.1 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2013. The IDC used the Worldwide Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker to come up with its percentages.

This is the first time since the first quarter of 2011 that both inkjet and laser segments saw year-over-year shipment growth. Inkjet saw a 0.4 percent and laser a 5.9 percent growth.

A big contribution to the overall growth was the positive year-over-year results from the Asia/Pacific market. Asia/Pacific had a 5.2 percent growth followed by Western Europe at 3.5 percent and the United States at 0.5 percent.

Phuong Hang, Program Manager, Worldwide Hardcopy Peripheral Tracker says,"HP and Brother were the biggest contributors to the year-over-year increase in the worldwide hardcopy peripherals market. HP's growth in laser technology was driven by its on-going trade-in promotion and its efforts to increase the storefront visibility of the LaserJet Pro P1102/P1102w, HP's top-selling model. IDC expects the overall market to continue growing in the single digits over the next four quarters.”

Inkjet, the biggest hardcopy technology market recorded worldwide shipments of 16.8 million units. The biggest driver in the growth was the 4.0 percent year-over-year increase experienced in inkjet multi function printers (MFP). This is the first time since 2011 that six out of eight regional markets showed positive year-over-year positive results in the MFP market.

Monochrome laser devices grew 5.5 percent year-over-year in 3Q13 to 8.3 million units shipped. These numbers resulted in a 39 percent share of the overall hardcopy peripherals market. Growth in monochrome shipments were seen in five of the eight regional markets. Latin America posted the best performance at 16.4 percent. Gains were also seen by APeJ, Canada, Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Western Europe.

A 7.8 percent year-over-year growth in 3Q13 was seen by color laser devices. Color laser devices had more than 1.8 million units shipped.

When it comes to vendors, HP lead the global hardcopy peripherals market with 40.7 percent market share in 3Q13. They were followed by Canon (News - Alert) who captured 20.4 percent of the market in 3Q13. Epson held onto the number 3 position with 14.2 percent share and 4 million units shipped.

Hardcopy Peripherals include single-function printers, printer-based multi function systems (MFPs), and single-function digital copiers (SF DC). The data for vendors are reported for calendar periods.