Overall, respondents believed that toner devices provide the best image quality and the best value for money. The survey showed that respondents preferred toner printing over offset printing by a significant margin. While the gap is smaller, liquid-ink printing is still preferred over offset and while ink-jet is also preferred over offset, the difference is marginal, meaning the two are basically on par according to survey respondents.

Most in-house production printing work is done in monochrome, while outsource providers’ volumes are split 50-50 between color and monochrome. However, the surveyed showed that color printing is not expected to grow in 2009.

From 2007-2008, the U.S. color percentage dropped a percentage point, while the U.K., France and Germany all gained a percentage point of color production. For 2009, U.S. and French respondents projected that their percentage of pages printed in color would decrease very slightly, while respondents in the U.K. and Germany predicted color page growth.

Digital copiers and multifunction products (MFPs) were the dominant technology with 52 percent and 48 percent running those types of equipment, respectively. Digital presses and printers were close behind with 44 percent of organizations using and offset presses were significantly less at 27 percent.

“Because we also learned most production printing operations have up to nine of each device on hand, the use of copiers and MFPs reflects the breadth of the devices employed in an enterprise,” said Pete Basiliere, research director at Gartner. “Not typically considered ‘production printers’, such devices would complement the higher productivity of digital and, where found, offset presses.”

More information can be found in the report “User Survey Analysis: Production Print Buyers Prefer Digital Printing to Offset Printing” which is available on Gartner’s Web site.