Korean vendor Samsung has thrown its hat into the colour laser printer arena, in a move some commentators believe will use its peripherals strength to ramp up in the US commercial channel.
Until now, the vendor only made monochrome printers. Samsung's first colour laser printers are slated to ship later this quarter, the company's executives have said.
One configuration of its US$699 CLP-500 colour laser printer will ship initially to office superstores in the fourth quarter, but Samsung will add wireless and networking functionality before shipping it to the commercial reseller channel in the first quarter of 2004, said Rey Roque, vice-president of product marketing at Samsung's Digital Information Technology Division in the US.
The printer will fall under the Power Partner program, an initiative where Samsung provides financial incentives--including marketing funds and rebates--to resellers that sell a range of the company's PC peripherals and consumables, Roque said.
'When you combine [this printer] with our strong storage and display business, a channel partner can really start to accelerate [its financial return from Samsung],' Roque said.
Samsung executives said the CLP-500 would produce five pages per minute in color and 20 ppm in monochrome, company executives said. Samsung will also make its own colour-laser print engines to contain fewer moving parts than other printers and therefore be measurably quieter.
The CLP-500 would also ship with USB 2.0, built-in IEEE 1284 parallel interfaces, a 250-sheet cassette and a 100-sheet document feeder, they said.
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