Digital printing was originally developed for small-run jobs, due to the fact that a digital file or image can be printed directly on a large variety of medias, without the major preparation that is required in the traditional offset-printing.
The growth in this field is disproportional to the overall growth in the printing industry, and there are few major reasons for that:
The cost per-print in the digital printing is much higher than the cost in the traditional offset printing but the setup that needs to be done in offset is much more complicated and expensive which makes digital printing a better solution for small-run jobs.
The technology in digital printing is more and more evolved every year, which reduces the cost for printing and therefore it makes sense to use digital printing in many medium-run jobs.
Variable data in the billing-printing and other segments that require different date per print are growing and can be done using digital presses only.
Web-to-Print and Print-on-Demand markets are growing, in most cases end users require a personal print in small quantities which makes digital printing more relevant.