Packard upbeat on leading printer market

JAKARTA (JP): Hewlett Packard, a United States-based printer producer, is upbeat about maintaining its leadership in Indonesia's printer market despite growing competition from other international printer producers.

Lee Ray Massey, the company's worldwide marketing manager, said here yesterday the competition in the printer market in Indonesia is sharply growing.

"We are sure we will be able to maintain our leadership despite the growing competition," Massey said at the end of his Indonesian visit.

Chin Hon Cheng, the company's channel marketing manager for sales and distribution operations in the Asia-Pacific, said that the company's printers continue to dominate the Indonesian printer market, with a sales growth of over 40 percent for laser- jet printers and 60 percent for ink-jet printers.

He said that the company's share in the Indonesian laser-jet printer market reached 93.7 percent as of June this year, while in the ink-jet printer market it was 52.7 percent.

The market share of the company's main rivals in the sales of laser-jet printers in the country ranged between 1 percent to 4 percent. The combined market shares of Brothers and Panasonic was, for example, less than 10 percent.

In the ink-jet printer market, the company's main competitors such as Epson and Cannon respectively had 30 percent and 16 percent of the total market volume, he added.

Messey said the worldwide printer market will continue to boom in the next few years in line with the rapid growth in worldwide users of the Internet, in addition to the increase of printers in growing business activities.

He said that the company's future printers will be designed in a such way that they will be able to print directly from the Internet.

Unlike in the printer business, Hewlett Packard only ranks sixth in the Asia-Pacific personal computer market, with a market share of less than 4 percent in the second semester of this year. (hen)