A new report suggests that MFPs are now squeezing shipments of single-function A4 devices in India.
Economic Times reported that shipments of standard A4 machines in India fell to 745,000 units from 794,000 in the same quarter last year, due mainly to “greater demand” for MFPs, according to a report from CyberMedia Research.
The report states that the “price differential” between single and multi-function printers has “been narrowing over time”, and this is a reason for the declining figures. With increasing customer preference for new technologies including wireless connectivity, duplex printing and touch-screen interfaces, other printer markets are suffering as a result.
The report suggests that, in terms of OEM share, the overall Indian single function A4 printer market is still led by HP with a 47 percent share, whilst Canon and Epson follow in second and third place with 20 and 13 percent shares respectively.
In inkjet, MFP machine sales grew five percent, whilst single function saw a 50 percent fall, with HP holding a 52 percent share over Canon’s 23 percent and Epson’s 22 percent. Laser meanwhile as a whole saw a six percent growth, with MFP sales increasing by 38 percent and single function falling by 14 percent, and HP retaining first place with 51 percent share, followed again by Canon but with Samsung in third place.
Maninder Singh, Analyst for CyberMedia, stated of the results: “Wi-Fi technology is now a stable and widespread feature in printers. Consumers want to be able to print remotely and wirelessly. The other important preference that has emerged is for duplex printing. Finally, touch-screen interfaces are also taking the place of buttons that control the advanced functions on high-end printers.”
Dot-matrix printers in turn saw a huge fall of 28 percent in the same year-on-year period, with Epson leading this niche market with 53 percent share, which Analyst Sumanta Mukherjee noted was a reflection of the market “stagnat[ing]” in recent years, due to an “absence of deals and decreased government buying”, with growth not expected before 2015.
Mukherjee added of the A4 printer results: “These numbers point to the trend of increasing demand for multi-function printers amongst customers with vendors like Ricoh, Konica Minolta, Brother and Pantum launching new models and pursuing aggressive promotions.”