The company expects sales from copiers to be Bt470 million this year, giving it a 17.4-per-cent share of a market valued at Bt2.7 billion.

It sold copiers worth Bt430 million last year.

Yoshida said black-and-white copier products continued to be in high demand, dominating the copier industry. The company is now starting up a production line for the latest copiers at its manufacturing facilities in Thailand.

He added that the new products were expected to launch in January and will be sold to target customers, mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, through a network of dealers and trade channels.

The two new locally produced products - the AR5316E and the AR5320E - will be added to eight existing lines. With total annual production capacity of 180,000 units, only four of the eight models produced by the facilities in Nakhon Pathom province are being sold domestically.

The remainder are exported to North America, Europe and countries within Asean.

Beyond these four locally produced models, Sharp has 16 models offered in the full range of copier products, from small to high-speed models, to match different customer needs.

The company will increase its focus on digital colour copiers as the segment has recently shown significant growth in developed markets such as Japan, the United States and Europe.

"The popularity of digital colour copiers in developing markets like Thailand is also increasing, since technology moves very fast. Since last year we have launched seven models of digital colour copiers in the global market. In Thailand, a new series of colour copiers was launched a few months ago," he said. - the nation