The Hindu Business Line : 3-in-1 devices gain at the cost of plain vanilla printers

New Delhi, March 23 At a time when the domestic PC market scored a double-digit growth, sale of standalone printers have slumped 10 per cent in the first half of the financial year 2008. However, printer and paper firms seem unperturbed as they point to shifting consumer preference for all-in-one devices, and rise in network adoption.

“With information overload due to Internet and connectivity, prints have actually gone up. There is no change in our framework, which demands multiple copies of documents such as invoices and challans. An average Indian user prints about 3-4 times more than worldwide average,” said Mr Jayant Gundewar, Chief Strategy Officer, WeP Peripherals.

The industry contends that a major shift is occurring in terms of printers being attached to networks. More importantly, many of those using laser printers are now moving to multi-functional devices (MFDs), which perform functions such as scanning, copying, fax and printing.

Canon, for instance, has seen sale of inkjet MFDs grow 118 per cent, Laser MFDs by 41 per cent and Copier Laser MFDs by 32 per cent in 2007.

As per the Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT), printer sales in the first half stood at 6.8 lakh units, due to poor offtake in business segment. MAIT, however, does not report MFDs under the printer category and so the numbers only reflect standalone printers.

“Consumption of MFDs has taken-off in a big way as large corporates and SMBs are buying these products as a cost-effective solution. For households, the sale of dot matrix printers and inkjets has actually grown,” said MAIT Executive Director, Mr Vinnie Mehta.

Hewlett-Packard declined to comment on the issue, while TVS Electronics’ General Manager- Business Development, Mr N.V. Mahadevan, said that consumption of materials used in DMPs is increasing as was evident from the demand for ribbons and ink refills.

Some like Canon are swearing by growing consumer acceptance for copier-based products (compared to printer-based products).

“We see a shift to copier-based products where the running cost is cheaper,” said Mr Alok Bharadwaj, Senior Vice-President, Canon India.

Mr Rajiv Sheopuri, Chief Executive, Market and Business Development, JK Paper, says the company’s copier paper sales has been growing at about 28 per cent and is now at about 10,000 tonnes a month.

Another market leader, Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Ltd, has also reported growth at over 15 per cent with monthly sales of over 4,500 tonnes.

(With inputs from R. Balaji and K. Bharat Kumar in Chennai)