Next is the Professional Print Business. As written in the top, just like Office Business, we were affected by the stronger yen and economic slowdown. We are focusing on MPP. This MPP is having a strong share. The market has slowed down, and the volume declined. And we could not hit back this impact. The performance is shown in the bottom right with the dark blue bars, showing the decline in volume. Again, the market shrank, and we also lost our volume. In the meantime, in LPP, though we have enjoyed a good business with a high share, in the 1st half, the price competition by our competitors became quite intensified. Because of this tough competition, unfortunately we had a tough time in growing our LPP business. Having said that, of course the production cost is a very important issue for us, we were affected by the major shift to Malaysia as I explained earlier. The fixed cost for the Chinese production has now shifted from office to production print, we could not reduce the fixed cost in the 2Q at all. This is one of the reasons for the deterioration in profit. As for non-hard shown here in the bar graph, it became negative in the 2Q. I strongly believe this non- hard is critical, and I keep an eye on this. The reason for this drop is coming from China and Europe. As for other regions, we are maintaining the status quo, but this non- hard became so harsh in the 2Q particularly in Europe and China. Printing volume per unit did not increase and that affected us. Of course, we have new products planned for the 2nd half. Because of this we had an increase in development cost in the 2Q having its impact for revenue and gross margin. But there is a good new. We have a track record of 30% or higher growth in sales in the 6 countries in ASEAN. And this will lead us to next opportunities. Or in the industrial printing unit we are now focusing on, we are increasing our share firmly in the space of digital label press and digital inkjet press maintaining our top share.
As written in the top, just like Office Business, we were affected by the stronger yen and economic slowdown.
We are focusing on MPP. This MPP is having a strong share. The market has slowed down, and the volume declined. And we could not hit back this impact. The performance is shown in the bottom right with the dark blue bars, showing the decline in volume. Again, the market shrank, and we also lost our volume.
In the meantime, in LPP, though we have enjoyed a good business with a high share, in the 1st half, the price competition by our competitors became quite intensified. Because of this tough competition, unfortunately we had a tough time in growing our LPP business.
Having said that, of course the production cost is a very important issue for us, we were affected by the major shift to Malaysia as I explained earlier. The fixed cost for the Chinese production has now shifted from office to production print, we could not reduce the fixed cost in the 2Q at all. This is one of the reasons for the deterioration in profit.
As for non-hard shown here in the bar graph, it became negative in the 2Q. I strongly believe this non- hard is critical, and I keep an eye on this. The reason for this drop is coming from China and Europe. As for other regions, we are maintaining the status quo, but this non- hard became so harsh in the 2Q particularly in Europe and China. Printing volume per unit did not increase and that affected us.
Of course, we have new products planned for the 2nd half. Because of this we had an increase in development cost in the 2Q having its impact for revenue and gross margin.
But there is a good new. We have a track record of 30% or higher growth in sales in the 6 countries in ASEAN. And this will lead us to next opportunities. Or in the industrial printing unit we are now focusing on, we are increasing our share firmly in the space of digital label press and digital inkjet press maintaining our top share.