Is 3D Printing (Finally) Going Mainstream?

I got into 3D printing maaaaany years ago, and if you've done that too, you know how much tinkering is required. As much as I like to tinker, a few months ago I switched to the printer many hail as the iPhone of 3D printers - the Bambu Lab X1C - and the tinkering (mostly) stopped. It really is a different experience.

Less tinkering makes 3D printing more accessible, and if it's more accessible it means it has the potential to become more mainstream.

Did it?

A great way to see that is by looking at the trend of sales of Bambu Lab printers, which we can proxy by looking at downloads of Bambu Handy, the mobile app companion for all Bambu Lab printers.

According to Appfigures Intelligence, Bambu Handy was downloaded a little over 700K times from the App Store and Google Play since its launch back in 2022. That's a bit more than I expected, which is great.

Zooming in to answer our question, we can see that more than 91% of those downloads, or 645K, happened in 2024 - even though these printers have been around since 2022! That's already a strong signal that demand is growing faster than before.

And here's what's most interesting - This December was Bambu Handy's best month of downloads with 170K estimated downloads - about 24% of that big total we started with. In a single month.

I'm sure there are at least a few of you reading this very newsletter who received or gifted a 3D printer recently. If so, congratulations and welcome to the club.

3D printing isn't mainstream just yet, but having 3D printers that require less tinkering and are consistently reliable is certainly what 3D printer companies need in order to grow. Creality, a competitor to Bambu Lab, is following in its footsteps after having manufactured 3D printers that require tinkering for many years. Creality's companion app doesn't get many downloads though, so I didn't include it in this analysis.