Sharp enters printing solution business space

Company plans to appoint 10 major distributors to register 20 percent growth

during 2004-05

Sharp Business Systems India Ltd has revved up the much-hyped 'color in

office' mantra by launching its full color multifunction digital system

AR-C170M. The launch also marks the com-pany's entry into the already

cluttered MFD and printing solution business space.

While accepting the fact that the product would compete directly with similar

solutions from rival Canon, Xerox and HP, Sunil K Sinha, Chief Executive, Sharp

India said that he is assured of wooing the corpo-rate to switchover to the new

product because of its lower TCO and speed. In fact, the company is harping upon

on the lower TCO factor and has chalked out its market commu-nication strategy

based on it.

The company claims its new product delivers 17 color prints at Rs 4.49 per

page and 26 black and White prints at 49 paise per page, thereby crashing the

color printing cost in the market. According to the Atul K Gupta, National Marke-ting

and Business Develop-ment Manager, Sharp India "Our new solution helps save

up to 54 percent in terms of TCO as compared to color inkjet environment, and

around 53 percent vis-à-vis color copier environment acr-oss any existing brand

in India."

Giving details of the pro-duct, Sinha said, "The AR-C170M makes color

communi-cation affordable and enables the management of entire document needs of

a com-pany-copy, scan and print-from a single nodal point. This combined

with efficient net-work printing solution, inbuilt password-enabled security to

ensure confidentiality of a document and the unique price point makes it an

ideal busi-ness solution."

The company has aggre-ssively priced the product at Rs seven lakh and is

targeting to sell over 100 units in the next six months. Sharp has also chalked

out its plans for a nationwide road show-tar-geted primarily at the cor-porate

users as well as the IT reseller community.

Plans for point of sale (POS) road shows are also on the cards. According to

Sinha, while Sharp does not have a very strong IT channel base, the company is

looking at appointing 10 major distri-butors to help it achieve a 20 percent

growth in the segment during the fiscal 2004-05.

CyberMedia News


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