Rob Enderle: ‘Millennials Like to Print’ ⇥ tgdaily.com

Rob Enderle is a doofus, this we know for sure. He’s a pundit who cannot simply be measured on a scale of often right to often wrong. He says things that can only be a byproduct of a dependency on ignorance resin. But he’s fun to check in on every now and again to see what people who aren’t thinking are thinking.

Take, for example, a recent piece he wrote for TG Daily about “HP’s little understood printing success” — a riveting premise, I am aware:

I’m at HP Inc.’s Power of Print 2020 event this week, and there are several interesting takeaways from the event.

This cannot possibly be true.

One is that print isn’t in decline, not really. The numbers folks indicate that while older generations did cut back on printing, Millennials are printing more than their predecessors, which should result in market growth over the long term as these Millennials continue to become the dominant age group.

Enderle appears to contradict this observation just two paragraphs later:

I thought this was interesting that Millennials print around half again as much as older generations do.

(Update: I have heard from several readers who have pointed out that this convoluted sentence actually means fifty percent more compared to older generations. My bad.)

He goes on to give a peculiar explanation for the printing habits of the forever-perplexing millennial generation:

What was also interesting was where they printed, a significant number of them print at work but not at home. This behavior suggests there is a lot of office printing that has little to do with work.

This is pants-on-cone-on-head stupid. You know it, I know it, and he knows it.

Anyway, I’m not linking to this solely to poke fun at the babbling nonsense Enderle passes off as serious business analysis. There’s this, too:

Talking about services, one of the most successful HP Printing efforts is their printing subscription effort, where supplies are automatically ordered and arrive before they are needed. People particularly don’t want to deal with cartridges, and Millennials significantly prefer product approaches that reduce waste and are more environmentally friendly.

HP Inc.’s aggressive efforts to reduce waste, focus on responsible sourcing for paper, and aggressive support for the World Wildlife Fund, have allowed the company to be recognized as one of the leading US firms focusing on protecting the environment. I think there are two big reasons these subscriptions are successful. First, you never have to worry about being out of ink when you need to print, and second, it makes being green simple and easy, and a lot of us of all ages want to do what we can for the environment.

The real reason HP has found financial success with their ink delivery option is because a phony security update crippled third-party cartridges and the company began locking users into DRM-backed subscriptions. Of course, Enderle can’t say this truth because HP is one of his current clients, a detail that this article just happens to omit.