Epson challenges laser printer market

With an aim to take on 10% of laser printer market in FY 14, Epson India has introduced a cost effective M-series range of mono ink tank Inkjet printers.

This new product range will pave the way for Epson to have its presence in the mono document printing in the offices. The company claims to replace the laser printer requirement in offices with its launch, which offers 8,000 printing on the purchase of new printer and recurring printing cost of 12 paise.

Ram Prasad, deputy GM, consumer product group, Epson India said, "We don't want to play in the laser printer space, but we have our strategy to challenge laser printer requirement with our M- series Inkjet printer. Hence, this new range of printer will redefine the printing space in office. We have a strong presence in SMBs and corporates with other range of products be it projectors and Dot-matrix printers. But we don't have presence in mono document printing in the offices. Hence to leverage our existing strength in the offices, our M-series will allow is to foray into the office printing."

In a nutshell, Epson has a strong hold in printing market including in the bill and receipt printers. The company has 50% market share with in Inkjet printers holding a space of 33.81%(combined mono and multi-function). It has 18.7% marketshare in projector segment. The company garnered Rs 703 crore revenue last year in FY13, and achieved 20% growth. It is expecting 20-25% growth in FY14.

"12 lakh Inkjet and 15 lakh laser printers get sold annually. Of this, 92% of laser printers are mono, that shows, we have significant opportunities to grab. Already, we have seen, in Inkjet printer space, we are almost closing the gap with # 1 player, close to 34% marketshare. Moreover, in Inkjet space in the year 2011-12 we have a jump of close to 9% in terms of value market share and now we are driving market by value based offering to customers, this will increase our revenue significantly in coming years," Prasad added.

Epson sees, in the 14 lakh laser printers, there is a market requirement for cost efficiency.

The company is targeting laser printers as they are today widely used in offices.

Also, majority of the customers don't buy genuine toners. They purchase the printer and get the toner refilled by street corner shops. Therefore, laser printer companies are adopting different strategies to overcome this by either going for refill toners and taking MPS(managed print series) as a solution, so the prohibitive cost of genuine toners in the laser printers is one of the reasons for customers to look out for alternate solution. Therefore, Epson wants to capture this space with its mono Inkjet printer which will cost 12 paise per page with power consumption of 12 watt.

The company also claims, the ink bottle, which comes along with M series printers, would allow to print 8,000 pages, wherein a laser printer start-up toners only print 750 and full toner print 1500 pages. Not even this, with laser printer, the 1,000 print per page cost is Rs 2 in A4 size. Even with refill toner it costs to 50 paise. Epson says its M-series printers can print at just one third the cost of even low quality refilled laser toners used in laser printers. That's just 12 paise a page for black and white prints. No laser printer can match this level of printing economy.

Typically, in terms of cost of laser printers a network laser printer is available below Rs 10,000 mono and multi function comes at Rs 14,000. The Epson M100 single function mono ink tank system printer has an MRP of Rs. 9,999/- and the Epson M200 all-in-one mono ink tank system printer has an MRP of Rs. 13,999/-.

"Besides cost effective printing, our new printer also questions the current MPS model market, the other way to look it will also develop systems integrators to shift to our M series as it offers more cost effectiveness. Typically, we talk about lots of printing features like i-print, Wi-Fi, cloud printing, but the fact is customer wants printing has to be cost effective. These new business Inkjet printers will help Epson in achieving an important goal of the company's midterm strategy to 2015," concluded Prasad.