The market for multifunction devices for printing, faxing, copying and scanning in the US will double to $1.4bn by the year 2001 from its current rate of $732m, according to Gartner Group Inc figures. Around 1.39 million units should be shipped this year, a number expected to jump three-fold to more than 3.6 million in 2001. The value of the market for supplies associated with the machines is half again as much in sales figure terms, said the report, which predicted that devices with color copier output will overtake sales of monochrome devices some time next year.
