HP RULES IN ASIA PRINTER MARKET

[Anonymous]

HP Rules in Asia Printer Market
The non-laser technology behind Hewlett-Packard’s new line of printers targets large enterprises with high-volume workloads
Hewlett-Packard
(HP) has renewed its strategy to capture a bigger slice of the
enterprise printing market with its Edgeline technology.SPeaking at the
launch of HP’s CM8060 and CM8050 color multifunctional printers (MFPs),
based on the company’s new Edgeline technology, Gary Cutler, vice
president and general manager for Edgeline technologies at HP’s imaging
and printing group, noted that new printers are targeted at enterprises
with high-volume workloads, especially those that involve color.”This
is a huge technology breakthrough,” Cutler said. “There are more pieces
of intellectual property in Edgeline than 99 percent of technology
companies’ intellectual property portfolio.”Developed as part of HP’s
US$1.4 billion investment in next-generation printing technology,
Edgeline printers–unlike conventional printing methods–have print
heads that remain stationary, while the paper moves.With fewer moving
parts, the ink-based printers that tout printing, scanning, copying and
faxing capabilities offer the reliability of their laser counterparts,
according to HP. They are also cheaper to build, the company added.
With the stationary print heads, enterprises can expect speeds of up to
71 ppm (pages per minute) in mono, and up to 50 ppm for color prints.

The
new printers will be sold directly by HP and channel partners with
service and support options through HP’s managed printing services
contracts.Referring to the company’s internal research, Kelly Tan, HP’s
Asia-Pacific vice president of enterprise and specialty printing, said
the total market for HP Edgeline technology worldwide is expected to be
more than US$30 billion by 2009.Although Tan could not reveal how much
of that market would be contributed by Asia-Pacific customers, she said
HP is confident businesses in the region will jump on the
bandwagon.”Today, we also manage over 11,000 single-function and
multifunction devices for our customers under HP managed print services
contracts in Asia-Pacific and Japan,” she said, adding that the total
value of those contracts grew 80 percent year-on-year in 2006.

PAY PER PRINT
According
to Cutler, enterprises will be charged on a pay-per-use basis for the
new Edgeline printers. He added that the usage-based pricing offers
savings of up to 30 percent on color printing and copying.There is also
varying pricing for professional color usage, general-office color and
black-and-white printing.The new HP Color Accent feature also further
reduces costs by charging black-and-white print price for pages that
use a small amount of color, specifically, 100 characters in 10-point
font or the area of a half-inch square, according to Paul Lim, business
development manager of Edgeline enterprise printing at HP
Asia-Pacific.Tan noted that HP took the pole position last year in the
Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, laser MFP market, with a 34 percent
market share in unit shipment. Citing figures from research company
IDC, she said this represented a 15 percent increase market share in
2005, representing a 274 percent year-on-year growth in unit shipment.

Analyst
company Gartner said recently in a research note that HP’s usage-based
pricing model is “innovative”, noting that the hardware and
cost-per-page price positioning of new products will have a significant
impact on the market.”Other vendors will be forced to match or better
HP’s offering, thus engendering a very price-aggressive market where
the buyer will be king,” Gartner added, noting that Edgeline customers
can also use the pricing model to experiment with color usage and
monitor benefits associated with using business color in office
documents.However, Gartner advised enterprises to treat the new
Edgeline products as they would any first-generation product. “Edgeline
offers a viable alternative to established laser technologies but it
should be evaluated on a small scale, alongside existing solutions.”Be
cautious about making Edgeline the linchpin of your office printer or
MFP fleet, even if you see Edgeline as justification for an all-HP MFP
fleet or as proof that HP will soon dominate office MFPs as it already
does [with] office printers,” the analyst said.

[Author]

April 20, 2007 at 12:25 PM