No longer just printing

Paul Harman, operations manager Fuji Xerox Printers Oceania, believes that falling prices of printers generally, but especially in the colour markets (inkjet and laser), will bump product development into new directions, such as more targeted offerings.

For instance, he sees falling prices of colour laser printers forcing inkjet manufacturers to develop more specific products, while multi-function devices are already having a major impact on how printers are sold, bought and perceived.

Gartner reported a 17 percent fall in inkjet sales to 159,000 units for Q1 2005 while lasers rose 6 percent to 60,400 units.

Sales of multi-function devices rose 22 percent to 198,000 units.

"Consolidation of printer devices is something that all vendors are selling on to their channel partners," Harman says.

He sees resellers taking a leaf out of the books of photocopier makers and dealers in offering financed pay-per-copy arrangements. And like many others, he also envisages the growth in colour presenting new opportunities for resellers.

"Clearly the market is moving heavily to colour -- any heavy laden colour market is a good vertical to be in -- real estate, banking and finance, manufacturing and logistics have significant use for print devices," Harman says.

FXP's Harman: Falling prices to bump development into new areas

Although drawing much scepticism from the channel and consumers until just a few years ago, multi-function devices have now emerged as one of the fastest growing segments of the market.

This has created two major boons for the channel. First, in encouraging customers to buy more consumables as people with MFDs tend to use more paper and ink. Second, they force resellers to expand their expertise across more functions.

Gartner analyst Jackie Yeung says that businesses and consumers are being drawn to replace their existing equipment with increasingly higher quality and competitively priced multi-function devices.

"The AIO [all-in-one] devices, with mature technology, multi-function capacities and affordable pricing points, will attract customers from various market segments," she says, adding that the increased sales of these devices will increase opportunities for the channel to expand the services side of their business. Inkjet or page multi-function products (MFP) and/or AIO can be applied as part of a whole document solution, she believes.