Samsung eyes top slot in laser-printer market

When talking about Samsung, electrical home appliances and mobile phones come to mind. However, starting now, people across the world will also identify Samsung as a brand of choice for laser printers.

Printers are set to be the company's fourth wave after successes in memory chips, mobile phones and LCD televisions. Printers are to become a key business area for the company and with that view it has announced an aggressive plan to become the No-1 player in the laser-printer market by 2010.

 "We now stand second in the laser-printer market. We hope to become leaders in this segment in the next two years," Samsung Asia regional president and chief executive Sang-Jin Park said.

Samsung sees printers as holding great potential due to the huge market size. According to a market survey, the worldwide printer market was at US$131 billion (Bt4.2 trillion) last year, while the market for memory chips and LCD TVs was valued at $60 billion and $101 billion, respectively.

Of Samsung's $100-billion worldwide revenue last year, laser printers generated $2.5 billion. Park said the company plans to double that figure this year.

In Southeast Asia alone, laser-printer products generated $100 million in revenue last year, or growth of  80 per cent. The company expects to achieve 90-per-cent growth this year.

Park said the IT business had been a key focus area in recent years. The company achieved a 31-per-cent growth rate in the regional IT market last year. Given the high growth rate in the printer business, Park said the company believed this segment would become a growth engine to help drive Samsung's expansion in the IT market in the region. To build Samsung's brand equity in the laser-printer market, the company has also formulated strategies for design, optimisation and building partnerships.

Samsung Electronics senior vice president of the Digital Printing Division's Strategic Marketing Team  Jang Jae Lee said product design would be the first factor which will help raise Samsung's position in the printer market. The central idea is to make the printer smaller to make it fit on the user's desk.

The company's optimisation strategy aims to develop products with solutions and services customised to serve specific market segments such as government, finance, insurance, education and healthcare.

To differentiate the product from others in the market, Lee said the company is focusing on building partnerships with global leaders, including Microsoft and EMC. These partnerships will help develop a range of document-management and device-management solutions which will help corporates in streamlining workflow and ensuring efficient printer performance.

Samsung has partnered with IBM and CCP for the development of the JScribe Open Architecture. This initiative will build a standardised, common platform for hardware and software to help build solutions customised for specific customer needs.

Since solutions are key drivers in printer sales, especially for corporates, the company is setting up a regional solution centre in Singapore that will also function as Samsung's digital-printing solutions showcase.

 Park said the printer business would help Samsung gain experience as a solutions-focused business, as opposed to focused on products. It will also be a important step  in helping Samsung move toward the fifth wave of its business.

"We will work on solution development in the fourth wave before moving to the next wave. We see our fifth wave as one that will be about the integration of our core competencies in products and services," Park said.