S.KOREA:3RD PARTY TONER/INK MARKET

[Anonymous]

If we look into the 3rd party ink market situation in more detail…
In domestic market, there is a fierce competition in the large sized color printing field between the various business firms. This situation can be easily grasped by the unit prices offered in the market by them. It can be said that the sales price of the domestic format color printing product is the cheapest in the world in unit price wise.

There are supplied at the lower price less than those of export. With this regard, we would let you know that hardly any OEM ink products are sold in the market except for the several items. This is because even though the quality of the inks produced domestically is not perfect and acceptable, their sales are rather stabilized for their color tones are good that the 3rd party manufacturer’s ink products are less competitive to those of the local ones.

Maybe the vulnerability of the 3rd party’s product may lies in 1) Comparatively a short period of time spent in its development, 2) Lacking pertinent information and infra source, 3) Impossibility of designating a special material and 4) Lacking of customer recognition and so forth. We can explain it in more detail as follows:

Item 1) above: Normally, the people on the side of 3rd party introduce their new ink product they have developed only after new relevant equipment have launched into the market. The OEM ink producers start developing their new ink product only at the same time of developing the new system equipment has commenced, but the 3rd party’s ink development begins not until the new machines appear in the market. Even making the situation worse for the 3rd party, the system lines continuously trying to up grade their equipment forcing the use of 3rd party ink is to be maintained within a certain limitation. For this reason, the 3rd party manufacturers can take their action of countermeasure against the situation afterwards and delayed.

Item 2) above: There’s more instances that the 3rd party ink manufacturers become later comers to those of OEM product manufacturers. Therefore, they are apt to be less experienced and weak in technical know-how comparatively. Besides, their infra structures(Both in manpower management and facility standard) are maintained in a poor condition causing them for certain areas to have weak points with them. Item

3) above: In case of OEM ink product, in most cases, the most optimized materials are used or recommended for the use, but the 3rd party manufacturers are often have to keep up with the materials in use by the customers. Item

4) above: It may well said that they don’t conduct their evaluation reasonably on the both cases. For instance, they are apt to admit the capacity limitation on the part of the OEM’s easily, but they make complains freely on the quality of those produced by the 3rd party manufacturers. They are going to tolerate for the case of inferior quality identified on the part of OEM with the excuse granted on their capacity limitation, but they express their dissatisfaction with the quality of the 3rd party ink products in its every aspects.

As mentioned in the above, we have tried to look into the matters pertaining to the 3rd party manufacturer’s knotty points. Under such circumstances, do the 3rd party manufacturers, including ourselves, have only such difficult points ? If they do, is it possible to continue the business by themselves? What kinds of countermeasures available to solve such crux of matters? These kinds of subjects could be the main issue the 3rd party business firms facing with, like our company. We, in the meantime would provide ourselves with possible means of settling as described below.

[Author]

February 1, 2005 at 10:09 AM