*NEWS*SAMSUNG IN HIGH-END PRINTER MARKET

Toner News Mobile Forums Latest Industry News *NEWS*SAMSUNG IN HIGH-END PRINTER MARKET

Date: Friday March 30, 2007 10:53:00 am
Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
  • Author
    Posts

  • Anonymous
    Inactive

    Samsung to take on enterprise printer market
    South Korean electronics giant Samsung said it will now step into the mid- and high-end enterprise-class laser printer market.
    “We want to enter the business-to-business (B2B) market and we’ll need
    midand high-end machines for that,” said Shin Hyundae, Samsung’s
    vice-president of its printer division.  “We made a success story out
    of our low-end laser printers and now we’re focusing on the mid- and
    high-end printer market,” he said. Hyundae said Samsung plans to double
    the number of sales personnel who work with B2B resellers worldwide and
    also introduce a power partner programme for resellers. According to
    him, the company is on a good footing to take on the challenge as it
    has its own manufacturing facility and makes its own electronic chips. 
    “We can reduce the product size and material cost with a one-chip
    solution because we also make our own semiconductors,” he told
    reporters during the recent annual CeBIT trade fair in Hanover,
    Germany. Last year, the company placed second in the monochrome laser
    printer market, first in the A4-sized flatbed mono laser multifunction
    printer market, and fourth in the colour laser printer market
    worldwide. “Fourth in the colour laser printer market is a big
    achievement for us because we ranked seventh just a year before,”
    Hyundae said. “We are also currently seventh in the overall printer
    market worldwide and we’ve achieved this without an inkjet printer
    portfolio to speak of.” Hyundae said the company hopes to climb to
    third spot by 2010 and plans to do this even while solely sticking to
    laser printer technology. “Laser has much more advantage over ink so we
    won’t focus on ink-based printers at all,” he claimed. “It is expensive
    but we can reduce the price of manufacturing laser printers and make
    them compete with inkjets.” Higher growth .Currently, according to
    Hyundae, the average growth rate of colour laser printer adoption
    worldwide stands at about 20% annually. However, he expects this rate
    to increase with the dropping price of laser printers. “Last year, for
    example, the average price for a colour laser printer was US$1,000
    (RM3,700). “However, we’ve managed to develop a colour laser printer
    for US$300 (RM1,110),” Hyundae explained. He also expects more
    consumers will buy laser printers for their homes as a result of this
    drop in price. However, he added, there is still some work to be done
    in bringing the right combination of the machine’s size and printing
    noise that will convince users to buy them for their homes. But Hyundae
    believes that increased laser printer adoption is a certainty. “I
    believe the printer will be the core of convergence in the future. All
    sorts of devices will be connected and the need to print will rise.
    “The printer business is a future strategic business for Samsung and
    we’re really serious about it.

    The company has invested a lot of money in it,” Hyundae said.
    He
    also added that the company is investing more in its Star (Samsung
    Takeback and Recycling) programme which was launched in 2005. “We are
    expanding it worldwide and have recently opened our recycling centre in
    Seoul,” he said. According to him, the company is also running the
    programme in 16 European countries. He said that Samsung is putting in
    a bigger emphasis on it in Asia but is still studying how to implement
    the programme properly as finding the right people to recycle e-waste
    correctly is not easy

Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.