Indian Printer Market gaining momentum

The past few years have seen that the laser printers have become a more preferred option as compared to the inkjet printers because of their faster speed, superior quality colour graphics and the ability to handle complex applications. A look at the printer market suggests that the market has undergone a significant change and the future holds a great deal of potential for all the vendors to expand. The laser printers have become more affordable with printers available in the sub-Rs.5k category as well.

Inkjet vs. Laser

Both technologies are meant for different kinds of business needs. What is important for business customers is to firstly determine and differentiate their printing needs and hence select the appropriate printer based on performance, print quality, affordability, networking, etc. The primary goal of any printing solutions provider should be to connect customers with the best product, regardless of the specific technology.

Increased PC consumption in the home market is driving the inkjet sales, whereas the drop in prices in the laser printers is driving its consumption in the SMEs. Digital printing is cost-effective and opens up new avenues with features such as variable data printing which allows you to make large volumes of prints with significant differences in each printed item. World over, digital printing has changed the face of printing.

Each segment of printers has its own audience. For home users, inkjets are more preferred as they give them colour lab quality photo prints, enable printing on various media like T-shirts, etc., offer features like printing directly from digital camera, SD card, etc. Laser printers are gaining momentum in the SOHO and office segments because they score high on factors like high quality prints, space saving, ease of use, value, low total cost of ownership and operational costs. And now, the latest trend is that laser printers are also becoming a consumer product and penetrating homes. Both technologies are relevant and their usage decides purchase.

“HP has the widest range of products to offer under its Imaging & Printing Group that caters to the needs of business and consumers across India. HP Imaging & Printing Group is so diverse that it helps its customers – be it the consumers, SOHO, SMBs and larger enterprises to give them ample options to choose from basis their requirements,” says Ajay Rawal, Country Category Manager – Commercial Volume (LaserJet), IPG, HP India Sales Pvt. Ltd.

It is now established that Home/ SOHO is where inkjet/ inkjet MFD sell in majority and laser technology products are bought by high print volume customers to reduce total cost of ownership. 

“The laser segment is making fast strides currently because SME and corporate market is being rejuvenated. In the inkjet segment, simple function printers are re-growing because of the new technology of convergence with All-in-Ones (AiOs),” says V. P. Sajeevan, Director – CSP, Canon India. “When it comes to Canon, it has grown at 95%, which is a double percentage growth of what we achieved last year. Canon has also emerged as the leading player in the LaserJet segment in the first quarter of 2010. We have taken a consolidated figure for both single function and multifunction laser printers before arriving at this conclusion,” says Sajeevan. 

"The trend on the usage of the inkjet category seems to be on the rise, especially with the advent of the HBB (Home Based Businesses) leading to the popularity of the category. Also, other factors like print quality, speed, downtime, TCO, life, etc.) are some of the influential factors in the resurgence of the IJ category as a whole,” says Nirmalya Biswas, Marketing Manager, Brother International (I) Pvt. Ltd. Nirmalya adds, “At Brother, we have been instrumental in giving products in this category right from the start. Also, with good cameras – now available at really affordable prices, the popularity of photo-printing is also leading to the popularity of the IJ category.

The trend is more positively changing towards the MFDs (multifunction devices) rather than the standalone IJ printers. The usage of non-genuine or compatibles which is reducing the cost of cartridges is also leading to the popularity of the usage of the Inkjet category.”

HP’s IPG maintains to be the leader in the Indian market with the widest portfolio and maximum offerings across categories. “The company stood the strongest with the market share of 70 per cent in the overall inkjet category,” says Rawal

HP Inkjet portfolio is designed and categorized to offer printing solutions for everyone, from a photo printing enthusiast, a small micro business entrepreneur for printing documents of daily need, a school student to print projects/ notes etc. to a mother who likes to print with ease at an affordable price. In the recent past, the share of Brother has also doubled in the segment.

“We have seen growth across our Inkjet products in the last 3–4 years and last year in fact saw the most significant growth. We expect this trend to continue in the coming years as well,” says Ramprasad, Sr. Business Manager, Consumer Product Group, Epson India.  

As per the latest PIRA report released in 2010, the global printing industry is estimated to be around $676 billion in 2014 and is growing at the rate of 5%. The Indian printing industry is growing at about 12.2%, with the laser printers growing at about 30% year on year

Vipin Tuteja, Executive Director, Marketing and Business Support, Xerox India Limited, foresees a huge opportunity that exists in the laser printing market in India. According to Vipin, “Xerox plans to expand its presence in various segments, providing appropriate solutions in single function and multifunction devices based on laser technology in A4/A3, b/w-colour of varying speeds with right software and accelerating the colour adoption in businesses.” 

“The laser printer or the page printer as they are called is also on the rise. However, the deciding factor in this segment is the TCO – which plays a vital role in the decision- making of buying/procuring a laser printer of any make. Here also, the MFDs have played a significant role in influencing the growth in this category,” says Nirmalya of Brother.  

The trends in the laser segment can be categorized under the transition from single function to multifunction network devices, the increase in the adoption of colour lasers over standalone b/w devices and the movement from A4 to A3 laser printing.

Over the last few years, there has been an ever-growing market for laser devices triggered by adoption of Laser MFDs in small/medium size businesses as well as enterprises. Today, the MFDs have made a significant contribution towards taking the concept of “Office Next” to a higher level.  Going forward, as this market matures, mono lasers will take a low and “Colour laser MFDs” are going to become extremely popular providing customers colour solutions at effective price points. As a result, Xerox has also transitioned a movement from single function to multifunction laser devices and from b/w to colour laser devices. 

The companies like HP, Canon, Xerox and Samsung are, therefore, targeting laser printer market at larg“These printers are designed to accelerate business decisions, help them grow and be more competitive, reduce costs, increase productivity and much more. For our commercial customers, HP has over 25 new printing solutions making it easier, faster, and more affordable for companies to market their business, including the opportunity to create and print exactly what they need in-house,” says Rawal.

Dot-Matrix Printer

Dot Matrix as a technology is even today preferred technology for transaction printings across any organization, irrespective of the size. “With the boom that we are witnessing in the retail segment as well as in the banking segment, Dot-Matrix is growing more strongly in this segment than any other technology,” says Ramprasad.

Epson is the dominant player in the Dot-Matrix Printers with close-to 60% market share. “Epson being the pioneers, we keep innovating and providing customized products. The latest trend that we have seen is the need for more such customized billing and transaction printing requirements growing across the BFSI/Education and retail segment. This boom is just a tip of the iceberg as we expect the trend to get even more towards such solutions as the B/C/D class cities start getting into development mode in the coming years,” says Ramprasad.

Channel Challenges 

HP enjoys one of the most effective channel networks in India. HP India’s Imaging and Printing Group’s ongoing commitment towards all its customers has made it an undisputed market leader in India. In order to deliver the best of our product and services to our customers, we not only empower our channel partners adequately but also provide them with rigorous training time and again so that they can cater to each and every need of the consumers.”

The company does periodic trainings for their partners and their sales teams on product and application skill sets. “There are demo programmes and end-customer engagement and awareness building activities done all the year round to enable our partners to remain updated on the latest trends in the imaging & printing arena. Over and above this, we do a lot of collaterals meant for specific customers segments within SMBs. We also run a lot of channel programmes and incentives backed by a lot of end-customer promotions as well.”

HP has about 400 premium retailers, about 1,500 multi vendor retailers and 3,500 business partners who handle the SMB and commercial segments. “We also have thousands of smaller dealers who buy these products from a sub-distributor. We have about 3,000 distributors. HP ensures that it consistently updates its channel partners about the new offerings to the Indian market. For this, the company organizes training programmes and workshops that are moduled to explain the new products, conduct demos and get their feedback,” says  Rawal, 

To understand the business of the partners better, HP conducts in-store promotion activity which enables to maintain a consistent flow of information between the store, shoppers and the company. Also, HP develops circulars, ads and in-store materials faster, to reach the partners more often and stay ahead of promotional cycles.  “We have a unique set-up compared to any other competitor in the industry. We have set up a combination for home users what we call premium retailers/experience zone retailers/ HP world retailers which are HP exclusive outlets where customers can go to experience HP products from a retail perspective or a home user perspective and decide to buy. No other vendor has such a wide range of products which a customer can experience,” says Rawal of HP. 

“We do engage ourselves in all kinds of promotional activities from time to time in order to build that connect with our customers. Image Express, started last month, is one of them. We have covered 5 cities till date and had 45,000 customer walk-ins to get a first- hand experience of the products displayed there. It includes all the new products launched as well as the existent ones, covering all the Canon products. We have done Rs.1.5-crore spot selling through this road show. The response has been fantastic because this is the first time that Canon has introduced such kind of a show,” says Canon.  

“Lexmark is very committed to its channel partner’s growth and profitability. We have an online portal for online training. In addition to it, our exclusive Diamond and Platinum partners get training on a regular basis from our executives. We also support our partners with sales kits, case studies, competitive information and new solution to compete in the market,” says R. Raja Shekar, National Manager, Lexmark International (India) Pvt. Ltd.

“We are currently focussing on Office automation partners, and corporate reseller to reach out to enterprises of all sizes. We are looking at large SIs to offer Lexmark products as their first choice of preference. We have our team across India that train our partners on a regular basis. For our Diamond and Platinum partners, we give them access to our internal website and offer various online training programmes and schemes/awards,” adds Shekar. 

Xerox has over 500 Xerox partners nationally who are a mix of Xerox Premium partners, VARs, Sub-Distributors. These are the channels that sell Xerox products to consumers at SOHO do for their customers. With an amalgamated effort in a) driving enterprise customers towards business efficiency solutions, b) to being a technology provider for channel partners in the solution space for mid-market and Government, c) and aligning the channel training needs to drive solution selling approach within existing partners and new partners, Xerox India is placed competitively in the marketplace.” 

“Channel partners are our extended team and they are the interface between Xerox solutions and our customers. They are the face of the company to our customers and Xerox provides adequate support to channel partners in terms of training – online learning support, marketing support, co-activities, regular meetings updates from channel team and pre- and post-sales support, etc. Our partner loyalty programme ensures that they are rewarded on achieving their targets,” says Vipin.

“Epson has pioneered the concept of holistic engagement of channel community with our dedicated programme called as ‘nDimension’. This provides platform throughout the year for the channel partners to the whole range of engagements, including trainings, etc.,” says Ramprasad.

Brother imparts regular trainings to its premium partners – termed as the BC1 (Brother Channel One partners). 

Finally....

As the world becomes increasingly connected, the printing and imaging industry has had to adjust its technology and offerings for a new, increasingly Web-centric era. MFPs are expected to lead the growth. As printing needs become less PC-centric and more Web-centric, enterprise customers will harness the Web as a primary platform and the printer sector has to adjust accordingly.