Report on thermal printing is available

A comprehensive market intelligence report entitled “Thermal Printing for 2014 and Beyond!” is available from the Information Management Institute. The report, compiled by Schofield Imaging Associates, details the current status and 5-year projections for thermal printing from both technology and industry perspectives.
 
Complete report details including downloadable brochure and purchase details are available on IMI's website.
 
According to thermal printing industry expert and report author, Harold Schofield, “After 40 years and many predictions alluding to its demise at the hands of ink jet and electrophotograpic printing, thermal printing is larger and more deeply entrenched in its core applications than ever.” Thermal printing is a massive, diversified industry with more than $34 billion in revenues at the end-user level.
 
The thermal printing industry is also in the midst of more volatility than ever. The hand held computing revolution poses future usage threats as well as future usage  opportunities; POS receipts and tickets are under siege from virtual receipts and email images; photo prints are being challenged by social media and smart phone image sharing and color thermal transfer has been marginalized by ink jet and electrophotographic printing advancements.
 
Yet thermal printing continues to experience steady growth in all aspects of label and tag printing as well as POS applications. It also enjoys continued growth in an ever expanding array of mobile work force applications driven by hand held computing and most recently by cloud computing. Specialization in thermal transfer printing has expanded its usage in industrial and decorative printing.
 
“Thermal Printing for 2014 and Beyond!” discusses developing technology trends that impact the future usage and dependence on variable data printing, as well as advances in competing digital technologies. Special focus is given to high growth vertical markets for labeling such as health care, retail and commercial services, as well as major markets such as POS that are undergoing significant change.
 
This report surveys application specialization in the major thermal markets from a product price/performance perspective and also assesses the competitive outlook for each market segment. Competitive assessments for market segments are based on the impact of distributed/hand held computing and wireless communication trends in industrial, scientific and retail sectors. Other factors evaluated in the report are industrial and professional compliance trends, retailing and end usage trends plus the evolving impact of competitive technologies.”