Lasers Take Over MFD Low End

IDC says the printer versus copier competition is heating up returning some interesting results in the colour part of the market.

IDC’s Katarzyna Czubak said, “The laser MFD market has seen major commodisation and downward pressure on cost per page. This is causing fundamental changes in the market positioning of printer and copier based MFD vendors.

“End users now require more ‘bang for their buck’ from the devices, so copier vendors are introducing higher-end devices and slowly leaving the low end of the market for printer based MFDs.”
Generally, IDC views copier-based MFDs as being primarily in the high end/high volume section of the market, while printer-based MFDs make up the the low end/low volume segment of the market.

While the multifunction laser (combined mono and colour) market grew soft at the end of 2005, the Q4 results were still up more than 50 per cent on the equivalent 2004 numbers says IDC.

IDC Australia says the laser MFD market grew less than 1 per cent sequentially over Q3, but increased 50.5 per cent from the same period in 2004.

“HP had a solid quarter to maintain first position with almost 17 per cent market share. Canon had a market share decline of almost 2.5 per cent sequentially, which was caused by decrease in printer based MFDs sales.

“Fuji Xerox finished in third position gaining almost 2 per cent market share sequentially as a result of the introduction of new models. Brother was able to rise to the fourth position in the market as they introduced their first colour MFD during the quarter.

Rounding out the top 5 was Samsung, who declined by over 2 per cent in market share,” said Czubak.

Top 5 Laser MFD Vendor Market Share
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