Canon targets 6% market share for laser printer

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

PT Datascript, a local distribution arm of Japanese electronic manufacturer Canon, is upbeat about making Canon the second largest in the country's laser printer segment by acquiring 6 percent shares of the market.

According to market research firm IDC, Canon was in third place in the domestic laser printer market last year with a 4 percent share after Hewlett Packard (HP) with 83 percent and Samsung 6 percent.

"The market size for the laser printer this year is 75,000 units from last year's 70,000," PT Datascript Canon Division Director Merry Harun said on Thursday.

In a bid to achieve the goal, Merry said Datascript would concentrate more on corporate and government offices for the marketing of its newest laser printers.

"Currently, Canon's laser printer market segment is 60 percent retail and 40 percent corporate and government offices," she said.

Datascript launched three new Canon laser printers on Thursday, namely Color Laser Shot LPB 5200 at a price of US$550, Laser Shot LPB 2900 at $175 and Laser Shot LPB 3000 at $160.

Datascript Marketing Executive, Luthfi Hifni, said the three Canon printers were designed for small office/home office (Soho) with a print speed ranging from 12 to 19 pages per minute (ppm) for monochrome documents and four ppm for color documents.

"We aim to sell 175 units of the new color laser printer and about 3,000 of the other two laser shot printers," Merry said.

Canon, which last year controlled a 50 percent market share of printers in Indonesia, sold around 3,015 laser printers and 546,000 inkjet printers in 2004. (001)