Trend

Innovation to the fore

India Inc is interested in deploying innovative printing solutions that lower TCO. By Faiz Askari

While the Indian printer market is graduating to an advanced stage, the term ‘digital’ is actually dominating this market space. Having said this, users are clearly looking at couple of factors in their printers. These factors are security, reliability and cost-effectiveness.

Consumers and enterprises are buying more network printers due to the printing volumes and increasing cost-competitiveness. However, they want to protect the confidentiality of documents from other users, which makes it necessary to have security measures in place.

Sanjay Sharma, VP-Digital Imaging Solution Business, Samsung India says, “We expect that the printer market in India should grow to around 750,000 units this year, thereby registering a growth of around 25 percent.”

Samir Shah, Country Manager, Commercial and Enterprise Printing, Imaging and Printing Group, HP India Sales says, “Today, if one can critically examine the Indian printer market, we can easily observe a few aspects dominating the mindshare of customers. These are affordability, confidentiality and convenience.”

He also highlighted some aspects of the Indian Printer market saying, “The growth of small businesses and enterprise customers becoming more technology-savvy are some of the signs of how the printer market has evolved in India. Interestingly, in the enterprise segment, customers have grown as they have a great deal of experience in dealing with technology. Now they want to use advanced technology for a lesser cost.”

Multi-functional growth

The Indian printer market has matured. Multi-function devices (MFDs) are more affordable and users have a wide choice of features and prices. Elaborating his views on this trend, Som Gangopadhyay, Director- Business Imaging Solutions says, “Enterprise users increasingly view the role of the printer in the organization as a contribution to office productivity. The new features seeping into today’s printers make them more versatile and these printers offer greater value for money.”

The growth rate (CAGR from 2004 to 2007) in the Laser A3 size MFD market is slotted to be around 23 percent. The size of the MFD market was 60,000 units in 2007 of which enterprises accounted for 35 percent, the government for 35 percent, while the SMB and SME segments accounted for 30 percent.

The Indian printer market scenario is buoyant. Gangopadhyay adds, “Due to a strong recovery of software businesses and increased awareness of printing costs, many organizations are investing in network printers to enhance cost efficiencies. This is an encouraging trend and will have implications for all printing companies.”

Advocating the productivity and acceptability of multi-functional devices, Shah says, “In terms of enabling enterprise and SMB customers to improve productivity and control operating costs, the MFDs deliver a powerful combination of features including high-speed performance, best-in-class operating costs, reliability, excellent output quality, and intuitive usability.”

Leading the charge

The categories leading growth are network laser printers and the multi-function printers. Sharma adds, “We are expecting the network laser printer category to double this year .The laser multi-function printer category should grow by 50 percent.”

The key to understanding how business printing and imaging are changing lies in looking at what customers actually want from their communications technology going forward. In that light, some trends therefore become critical in making offerings unique. While elaborating on these trends, Gangopadhyay says, “Customers are demanding solutions to business problems, not just devices. Effective enterprises will successfully tap their information to improve business decision-making. The company network is the lifeblood of the enterprise carrying vital information and knowledge to appropriate places in a company. Service-oriented businesses use streamlined imaging and printing to enhance their value to customers. Marketing pages are moving in-house as color lasers are approaching the quality of traditional commercial printers and color is increasingly leveraged for powerful business communications.”

Jose Leon, Sr. Marketing Manager, Xerox India adds, “Box prices have come down. Consumable prices have also come down, the TCO factor is now lower than that of inkjet, and the quality has improved drastically. Apart from this, consumers have started shifting to this category and color lasers have seen double digit growth.”

Innovation dominates

A few years back, when one spoke about MFDs, the only thing that came to mind was an office environment since the technology was not within the reach of an individual as it used to cost a lot. With the help of technological advancements and reduction in manufacturing cost, MFDs have become quite affordable. MFDs offer several functions in a small package.

Gangopadhyay says, “We introduce more than 80 new products every year. Customers want to own the latest technology and are looking for convenient service and support.”

Sharma says, “As far as Samsung is concerned, the innovation has happened in terms of the form factor. Color Laser Printers like the CLP 300, have become more compact, fit on the desktop and have quieter operations. Furthermore, it also features easy to install toner bottles, instead of larger unwieldy cartridges, allowing for a footprint small enough to fit on almost any desk. This stylishly designed two-tone printer delivers beautiful color prints along with quieter operation with the same exclusive NO NOIS print engine that is available in our high-end color laser printers.”

“Understanding the customer’s business objective is crucial in terms of offering a printing solution. At HP, we offer innovative technologies like Webjet Admin, universal print driver and ColorAccess Control. Apart from these we have also introduced the Edgeline range of products.”

Commenting on the customer’s evolving preference that has shifted from single function to multi-function, Leon says, “Instead of buying a laser printer, people prefer buying a MFD that offers a printer, copier, scanner and fax all in one device. The trend is to maximize space utilization and instead of having dedicated manual devices, customers prefer MFDs.”

Security status

This is a much talked about topic, but people have not yet taken the plunge. The moment a document leaves any system, the user needs to secure it, right till it reaches the printer. Intelligent devices provide security across geographical boundaries.

Enterprises are looking for information to track how much printing is done by individuals and they also want the option to password protect print jobs so that all documents are not available to everyone. Sharma says, “Samsung has developed solutions to enable such functions, as in the case of our high-end printers, ML 3561ND and ML4551ND, to name a few.”

Gangopadhyay adds, “We at Canon are working on technologies to encrypt PDF documents and you can decrypt these while taking the printout. This happens in a secure password protected environment so that your printouts cannot fall into the wrong hands. We believe that a PDF document is the most secure document. Canon’s security capabilities fall into three key areas.”

These include standard device security, network and print protection and data overwrite protection. Canon MFDs are awarded the “Common Criteria Certificate” for their security features. Gangopadhyay adds, “Canon MFDs have security kits for securing data, which is usually spooled on the HDDs of these MFDs by either encrypting data or completely erasing the spooled data through various methods, encrypted secure print for printing confidential data over the network, digital signatures for authentication, PDF encryption for scanned documents and password protected user mailboxes ensure complete peace of mind for our customers.”

Talking about the growing acceptance of security-enabled printing solutions, Leon adds, “Today all MFDs have the capability of connecting to a network, so security concerns exist. Xerox MFDs are the only ones which are NIAP certified on OS, disk overwrite, local user interface, Web user interface, post script, controller, scanner and fax card. This comforts the customer that with a Xerox MFD, his network is safe.”

Anticipating the future

IDC anticipates that the laser MFD market will grow consistently in the future. The growth will continue as printer-based products are competitively priced. IDC believes that laser MFDs will start cannibalizing the single function printer and copier markets. This will lead to a double-digit growth in the coming years, as this product will continue to be in the growth phase of its lifecycle. Color machines might cannibalize some mono machines in the higher speed segments. IDC estimates that the market will grow at a CAGR of 23 percent in unit terms over a five-year period between 2005 and 2010.

“As Average Sale Values (ASV) decline and laser MFDs become more affordable for small offices, the numbers will increase and in turn benefit the SMB and SOHO segment. In the future there is going to be strong competition between printer and the copier vendors, between A4 vendors and those selling A3 Laser MFDs. Perhaps the most important things for the laser MFD vendors to note is to keep on top level of the end users aware of their real printing needs and costs,” says Gangopadhyay.

He emphasized the significance of some upcoming technologies in document management including biometrics and nanotechnology. Gangopadhyay says, “You will find biometric tools in your credit card or your passport in coming years. As communication becomes increasingly mobile, hubs will be required to support them in a Wi-Fi environment. Nanotechnology is another area, which will open up a new frontier of innovation. Color will be as prevalent as black and white is today; in fact, you may have to search for a black and white printer in tomorrow’s enterprise.”

Sharma says, “Network and multi-function printers are high growth categories. Given the low penetration levels for this product, I see a huge potential for this category, going forward.”

Leon says, “This market is poised to grow as more professionals now work from home. Moreover, SMBs are adopting PCs and realize the worth of Information as and when they need it.”

Shah says, “In the future both single function technology and multi-function technology will co-exist in this market. The reason for this is the fact that the Indian market is huge.”