Close to $10 million is being pumped into the company's Indian subsidiaries - Samsung Electronics India Pvt Ltd, Samsung India Electronics Ltd (consumer durable arm) and Samsung India Software Operation (in-house software development comp any) - as part of its expansion plans.

Speaking on the plans, the company's business manager (office automation) Moninder Jain told eFe that the strategy was to offer products with more features at lower prices as against the company's main competitor.

"The pricing strategy is a key focus across the mid-and-high product range. Introducing new products with advanced features is also a thrust," Jain said. As part of the mid level range, the company was all set to launch two new models -- ML5200A and ML6060-- a 10 and 12 page per minute printers priced at Rs 27,000 and Rs 40,000 respectively, he said.

``The plan is to break the pricing structure of competitors like HP and offer products that will beat their pricing structure along with offering more features. The 10 ppm and 12 ppm printers are priced equivalent to HP's 8ppm and 10 ppm printers,'' Jain added.

A high end 17 ppm printer will also hit the market by January 2001 while the entire range of colour lasers scheduled for launch next year is being considered for introduction into the Indian market this year.

"Another new poduct-the Colour Station -- which is currently under R&D in Korea integrates the features and functionalities of a colour scanner, copier and a colour laser printer in one product is expected to come in this year," he said. Internet ready printers and facsimile machines were also ready for production and were expected to hit the market shortly, he added.While the company is already the second largest manufacturer of printers, the the rust is on ramping up volumes across all its products which included printers, monitors and hard disk drives. "Samsung currently has a 51 per cent market share in the colour monitor segment, while the hard disk drives have about 18 per cent which is expected to touch 32 per cent this year," he said.

As for sales projections, the market for laser printers is expected to be around 80,000 numbers while the HDD market is roughly 1 million drives for this year. Samsung was eyeing a large chunk of the printer market while targeting the sale of 4 lakh hard disk drives compared to 1.8 lakh last year. Samsung is currently in the process of expanding its services and sales network across the country for its entire range of products.