Samsung bites into HP’s laser printer marketshare

Indranil Chakraborty in Kolkata

The laserjet printer market has turned into a battlefield between Hewlett-Packard India Ltd and upstart Samsung Electronics India Information & Telecommunication Ltd.

According to latest market reports, Samsung has gained a marketshare of around 10 per cent, while HP has lost around six per cent in the July-September quarter of 2001, compared with the previous year’s quarter.

The market reports were confirmed by IDC (India), the leading IT market research company. Though IDC did not want to come out with any figure, it said Samsung had improved its performance since last year.

According to IDC India’s assistant manager for peripherals research, Ms Roli Sagar, Samsung has gained marketshare in the low-end market, compared to HP, which has lost some share.

In the Indian printer market, HP enjoys a near monopoly. According to estimates, in the last financial year, HP had a market share of 74 per cent in laser and inkjet printer markts. HP sold around 52,000 laser printers followed by Samsung with 5,500 units and Xerox with 5,300 units.

However, Samsung’s aggressive pricing and promotional activities helped it wrest a share of the market for low-end laser printers (8 to 10 page per minute category). Samsung has reported a large growth in this segment, especially with its ML4600 machine.

According to Mr Moninder Jain, Samsung’s country product manager, the company wants to sell around 20,000 laser printers in the current financial year. Samsung is aiming for year-end sales of Rs 1,325 crore in the IT peripherals and telecom markets.

“In the last two quarters, our marketshare has grown from around four per cent to around 15 per cent. This has happened because of our initiative in the channels and aggressive marketing policy. We have gained at the expense of HP, whose laserjet share has come down.”

Mr Nitin Hiranandani, HP’s country business manager for imaging and printing systems, said HP’s share in the laser market had come down from 88 per cent to 84 per cent in the April-June quarter.

However, HP believes that more than the marketshare, what the consumers watch is the price-performance ratio. In the laserjet market, HP has products from 10 PPM onwards, and wants to focus on technology.

Said Mr Hiranandani, “Take our product LJ1000, which is a 10 PPM printer. The price of this printer is Rs 18,000, compared with Samsung’s ML4600, which is a 8 PPM printer and is priced around Rs 17,000.

Compared to our competitors, we have a wide range of products from mono to color and our entire range was launched in the past six months.”

“I don’t think that one can compare our laser products with those of our competitors in terms of both technology and price-performance,” he said.