Russian state agencies cut spending on printers, scanners and multifunction devices (MFUs) in the first half of 2026, while foreign manufacturers such as Kyocera, Canon and HP appeared more often in government tenders than a year earlier.
According to data from the Roseltorg trading platform, cited by the business daily Vedomosti, the value of procurement fell 38% year on year to 3.48 billion rubles. A separate estimate from the RTS-tender platform put the decline at 21%, to 8.1 billion rubles, a gap the outlets attributed to differences in how the two platforms record purchases.
The steepest drop came in printers, where the starting maximum contract price on Roseltorg fell 71.6% to 616.2 million rubles. Scanner contract values fell 41.6% to 372.7 million rubles, while MFU contracts declined 35.8% to 2.76 billion rubles.
Number of Tenders Holds Steady
The value of large contracts worth 2 million rubles or more fell from roughly 7.9 billion to 5.9 billion rubles. Yet the overall number of tenders barely moved, at 719 compared with 716 a year earlier. That pattern suggests state buyers are trying to cut the cost of purchases rather than abandon equipment upgrades altogether.
Foreign Brands Gain Ground
Tenders mentioning Kyocera rose from 24 to 30 over the period. Mentions of Pantum climbed from 8 to 21, Canon from 9 to 20, and HP from 14 to 17. By contrast, the Russian brand Katyusha saw mentions rise only from 11 to 13, dropping it from third to fifth place among the manufacturers tracked.
Kyocera and Canon are Japanese manufacturers of printers and office imaging equipment, while HP is an American technology company known for its printer and computer lines. Katyusha is a Russian-made printer and MFU brand that has been promoted domestically as part of import-substitution efforts.
Budgets Blamed for the Shift
Market participants linked the trend chiefly to limited buyer budgets. One distributor said Russian-made devices do not always fit within the sums available to state customers.
Katyusha disputed that assessment. The company said its prices are, on average, comparable to those of foreign equivalents and can be lower on large, long-term contracts. It also said it had not raised wholesale prices for distributors in 2026 despite rising production costs.
Analysts noted that in some price categories, imported equipment, Kyocera in particular, remains more affordable than domestic alternatives. As a result, price is playing a bigger role in equipment choices as budgets tighten, with import substitution taking a back seat in some purchases.
A High Base From 2025
The market research firm Fplus suggested the decline may partly reflect an unusually high comparison point rather than a collapse in demand. It said state printer purchases in 2025 had been abnormally large, meaning the first-half 2026 figures could represent a return to more typical purchasing levels rather than a sharp drop in demand.
