By Fredrick Obura
Scramble for the tenders of office printers, video projectors, and scanners is shaping up with leading manufacturers reworking their marketing strategies.
This comes as most small, medium and large enterprises embrace efficiencies brought about by modern technologies. Last week saw Hiroma Taba, Epson’s president pitch tent in Nairobi with a team consisting of his vice president for sales Jean-Marie Lacroix in a strategy that would see the company use Nairobi as a hub to penetrate other markets in the East Africa.
“Kenya is a market we now need to look closely, the economy is thinking technology to reduce paper work,” said Taba.
“This is an opportunity to explore with modern video projectors, scanners, printers, and point of sale machines to help bring various efficiencies in the business environment,” he said.
Taba said the company has invested in research and development that will see affordable printers, scanners and projectors with less impact to environment being launched in the market.
“In our chosen markets on the continent, we intend to gain market share at a higher rate than market growth by striving to develop and create innovative products at affordable prices for all market segments,” said Mukesh Bector, accounts manager for Epson East Africa.
“We will be targeting the banking, education sector and government to grow sales.” Epson’s strategy has rattled Samsung, a competitor also seeing growth opportunity in higher institutions of learning with its wide range of printers. According to the latest industry statistics from the International Data Corporation, Samsung has 32 per cent of the printing market share in East and Central Africa while HP takes 47 per cent of the overall market share.
The company has introduced a new printing concept that will see the firm, through its resellers or channel partners, set up in-house document printing copying, faxing and scanning facilities for its clients on a pay-per-use basis.
Albert Kigada, Samsung East and Central Africa’s printing solutions manager said that the new concept, which involves consolidation for easy management to ensure efficient service delivery, ensures client organisations get best services as well as various additional benefits.
“Being a pay-per-use model, there will be no capital outlay by organisations, thereby freeing the organisations to use its resources elsewhere. There will also be a significant reduction document production costs,” said Kigada.
The launch of the pay-per-use model is part of Samsung’s drive to introduce cost-effective photocopiers for clients – like universities and the SME market. This will see the firm equip client institutions with multifunctional copiers.
