To entice buyers, printer manufacturers lower prices
By Staff -- Purchasing, 3/26/1998
Lower prices are luring buyers to purchase more color printers: Sales are starting to pick up.In 1997, manufacturers shipped an estimated 11.5 million color ink jet printers, up from 9.96 million units the year before, according to latest figures available from researchers at Dataquest. For color laser printers, the numbers are lower, but growth is still evident. Shipments in 1997 are expected to come in at around 80,000 units, an increase of nearly 4,000 units over 1996.
Looking out to the year 2001, Paula Bursley, senior industry analyst for Dataquest's Printers North America program, forecasts shipments of color ink jet printers to rise to 16.3 million units. She sees color laser printer shipments rising as well, to 305,000 units.
Still, Dataquest forecasts color printers to comprise only about 15% of the entire page-printer market by 2001.
As incentive to help boost these numbers, manufacturers are lowering prices, says Bursley. For instance, in 1997, Minolta introduced a new color printer priced at less than $3,000. Typically, buyers now are paying $3,000 to $5,000 for network color page printers.
For the most part, color has not been widely accepted by corporate users, but the trend to produce copies in color is growing (see sidebar). The reason color printers are not replacing black and white models at a faster rate? The technology is more complex.
Connected to a computer network, color printers typically are more troublesome for users to maintain. For one thing, the number of components involved is much higher than for color printers' monochrome counterparts. For black-and-white printers, users regularly only need to replace a cartridge. What's more, with color lasers, color shifts over time.
Demand for color printers, however, is growing mainly among users in financial organizations. Big companies use color printers to produce marketing brochures, while small businesses are using them to help gain a competitive edge.
Among suppliers, competition continues to be strong. Hewlett-Packard and Tektronix lead both in market share as well as shipments. Other players include Lexmark, Minolta, Apple, and Canon. Recently entering the market are Brother, Konica, and Sharp.
Manufacturers lure buyerswith lower printer prices
(000 units)
1995 1996 1997 2001
Desktop color page 32.6 56.4 80.0 305
(color laser & Tektronix solid ink)
Color ink jet 6,500 9,967 11,500 16,350
SOURCE: DATAQUEST
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