Behind the scenes, endeavouring to provide the wide-format industry and its watchers with accurate forecasts and related numbers, are impartial analysts and consultants whose skills result in accurate and reliable results. These specialists are able to give confidence across the board to everyone from manufacturers down to investing businesses of all sizes, as well as to channel and finance houses: all of whom require facts and with no accompanying biased puffery. It is debatable, however, how many sign-makers and display producers actually look at independently garnered information instead of just listening to what their suppliers tell them which, unsurprisingly, will be biased towards the equipment being purchased. By my reckoning, remarkably few end users take advantage of available resources and use them as an indication of market trends and direction.

Claims about the future have to be substantiated and proven correct - within reason - or predictions are not going to be worth the paper they're written on. Industries where technology plays a key role are particularly susceptible to unforeseen, drastic changes, with the wide-format sector a prime example of this. Thus far, however, bellwethers have held their own with the predicted growth in UV-curable engines countering the anticipated decline in solvent-basedprinters, while eco-solvent, latex and even aqueous-based platforms look to remain fairly steady in the next few years.

Tim Greene, wide-format service director at InfoTrends, agrees that there is no question that some parts of the wide-format market are mature or even in decline: "The way we look at it is that there are technologies that served the market in its early days that become less and less competitive over time as new technologies emerge," he states. "This is both natural and expected. A good example of this is in the low-end of aqueous ink-jet where those devices have been primarily used for proofing. Now that many customers and printers are either simply used to viewing their proof on the screen or just too time-constrained to demand hard copy proofs, the volume of that business is in decline."

In the overall graphics market InfoTrends is seeing a total volume growth of 6.7 percent from 2012 through 2017 based on several key dynamics. The first is the value that wide-format graphics brings, which is substantial. "There are numerous studies that prove the value of wide-format signage and graphics applications in terms of ROI, which we believe is increasingly important for marketers," Greene believes. "We also know that marketers believe that signs and graphics can be particularly effective at communicating their intended message. Effectiveness plus value equals sustained growth. We have surveyed wide-format print buyers in a recent study and found that there are very strong buying intentions for the coming year, averaging about a 14 percent increase, which reinforces the point that this is a growth business."

Because the use of wide-format technology now straddles a variety of industry sectors, it has become an integral element in many production operations from prototyping and proofing through to end products. Gauging statistics can never be an exact science, but companies such as InfoTrends know how to extrapolate the relevant facts from the fiction in the relevant segments to come up with accurate and valuable predictions.

"As for the validity of forecasts, I've developed something of a rebuttal to sceptics that goes like this: 'Look, it's not hard to guess what people want but what do buyers want?'" Greene continues. "They want to communicate their messages as convincingly and cost-effectively as possible. Also, they want to work with companies that understand what they are trying to do and that can facilitate accomplishment of those goals. I think our technology forecasts are tethered to the answers to those questions. Whichever wide-format graphics printing technologies deliver the ability to serve those customer demands are what will win the day. Technology-wise, the market directions are pretty clear: the question is usually simply velocity."

At the end of the day, forecasts give us a guide and show those interested in wide-format how the different ink technologies are most likely to perform in the coming years. We're not relying on soothsayers or those with a crystal ball to provide the information; instead, we are fortunate that we have industry analysts with the right degree of experience to extrapolate the relevant detail that clearly shows the direction our industry is heading.