Addressing a media conference here on Tuesday, Wipro Infotech PeripheralSystems chief executive Vineet Agrawal said that he expected Tamil languageprinters to capture a 20 per cent market share from its total production forregional languages. Currently, Wipro has a capacity of 10,000 dot matrixprinters.

These printers are multilingual with Hindi and English while the thirdlanguage (Tamil in this case) can be downloaded into the printer. The dotmatrix printers cost Rs 18,000 which comes bundled with a free Indian wordprocessor software valued at Rs 1,300.

However, the line matrix printers purported to be five times faster than thedot matrix at 600 lines per minute are manufactured by Printronix ofSingapore, the product being jointly developed by Printronix and Wipro. Theformer specialises in developing language line matrix printers and has a 58per cent share globally in this segment in various European and Asianlanguages. These printers come in the price band of Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 3 lakhdepending on the number of lines required per minute - 500 to 1,500.

Currently, the line matrix printers are bilingual having printingcapabilities in English and Tamil, though exclusive unilingual printers inTamil can also be introduced.

In India, Printronix has a 50 per cent share in line matrix printers whichare being imported from Singapore. However, the company would not be averseto setting up a factory here if the numbers warrant it. Philip Low,vice-president and managing director of Printronix had brought his materialsmanager to the country to explore the scope of localisation. ``We arehopeful of setting up an assembling unit here in the next couple of years''he said.