Is printing still relevant in the modern age?

Once, the corporate world was defined by the mix of cheap coffee and the hum of laser printers tirelessly working through one report after another. While the coffee may still be present, the printer's presence is fading. That's because physical printing is no longer as essential as it once was.

There was a time when sharing documents meant relying on shared folders, slow modems, or printing everything out to deliver by hand or mail. Now, with the Internet, documents are instantly accessible everywhere, anytime.

Printer sales are declining for both home and office use as fewer people see the need to print. In 2005, the average office worker printed 1,000 pages a month. By 2012, that number had dropped nearly in half [source: Wood].

At home, people aged 50 and older still print frequently, but teens and individuals in their 20s rarely print unless absolutely necessary. This shift is partly due to generational habits and also because older individuals find it harder to read on smaller handheld screens.

While glowing screens are helping protect forests, trees are far from safe. The U.S. alone prints billions of pages each year, and in countries with developing tech infrastructures, printer sales continue to rise.

Globally, inkjet printers remain the most popular choice, while monochrome laser printers are declining as more affordable color models become available.

In the U.S. and other advanced economies, printer sales have stabilized. The peak for home inkjet printers in America may have been in 2010 when manufacturers shipped around 16 million units. By 2016, projections suggested fewer than 10 million units would be sold [source: IDC].

Meanwhile, retail printing is booming as people upload photos from their smartphones to online services that print and ship them to their homes. This includes more than just photo prints—it also covers personalized items like calendars, coasters, magnets, and more. Many of these products are difficult to make on our own or at a competitive price. However, printing presentations filled with clip art for binders and folders? That's happening less frequently than before.

Improved, Faster, Outdated?

Despite printers being faster, better, and more affordable than ever, their sales have stagnated in many markets. The rise of better imaging applications, the Internet, and portable display devices are primarily driving this trend.

Paper is heavy, easily damaged, and often forgotten. On the other hand, storing your document on the Internet in your email account or a cloud service like Dropbox means you can access your files from anywhere using your smartphone or laptop, as long as you have a data connection.

Why print photos when you have social media? These apps act as digital refrigerator magnets, letting you browse through years of images with just a swipe of your thumb, no matter where you are. Each image is neatly organized by date and album, making it almost unnecessary to print photos anymore.

Despite all of this, printers will always be necessary. No matter how advanced our cloud apps become or how sophisticated our smartphones get, they can never fully replace the physicality of a printed page. Digital versions are just bits and bytes of data displayed on power-dependent screens.

With paper, no power is needed. You can read printed documents on a long flight without worrying about battery life or the discomfort of too much screen time. You can touch, smell, and view your presentations and pictures in a way that makes them feel real. You can even write on them with a pen.

In the near future, instead of purchasing a standalone printer, you'll likely opt for a multi-function printer (MFP) that also scans and faxes, in addition to printing. It’s like having an imaging station at your desk, capable of creating hard copies and scanning digital documents that you can take anywhere.

This combination of convenience gives you the option of having both digital and physical copies of any file you own. So, even as your documents become increasingly digital, you’ll still have the ability to print them onto paper in a permanent and tangible form.