HP goes bullish on India; launches 33 printers in a day

New launches include 17 printers focused on A4 segment and 16 on A3 segment

After announcing a definitive agreement to acquire Samsung’s printer business in a deal valued at $1.05 billion, the American personal computer and printing giant HP has gone bullish on India. Today, in an event in New Delhi, company launches 33 printers – 17 printers focused on A4 segment and 16 printers focused on A3 copier segment.

For, the Palo Alto, headquartered HP which is a market leader in A4 segment with 40% share in a 55 billion global A4 printing market, the foray into A3 copier segment opens up a window of new opportunity to explore, as the company merely has 5% market share in this segment. Globally A3 is a 55 billion market and it is mostly dominated by companies like Konica Minolta, Ricoh, Canon, Samsung among others.

“This launch is significant for HP because we are the leader in A4 segment with market share of 44% and it is continuously growing but in A3 segment, we only hold 5% in a 55 billion market, so there is a huge opportunity for us to grow in this market,” said Subin Joseph, head, printing solution, Asia Pacific, HP.

Basically, with the acquisition of Samsung’s printing business, HP will be able to incorporate some of the Samsung’s technology along with its recently launched page-wide technology in its printers for making its products more differentiated from its rivals in order to advance its share in A3 segment.

“Copier (A3) is already a matured market but the way this segment manages sale and services have not changed in last 2-3 decades. It is still more or less manual, not driven by automation. We will bring our technology, platform and large community of channel partners to automate the process to ease the life of end-user, service providers and partners,” said Parikshet Singh Tomar, director, printing systems, HP India.

Some of the newly launch single and multiple functions A3 and A4 printer such as new HP LaserJets series, new HP ScanJets series and HP LaserJet MFP M436 series have inbuilt sensors to analyse the different functionality of the printer in order to predict service requirement such as cartridge refilling in advance. According to company official this will help them in providing improved services to the end-users and channel partners.

In addition to use of emerging technology like predictive analytics, company is beefing up its existing channel partners and planning to rope-in new established channel players in this segment. “With these printers, we are targeting at small and medium enterprises (SMB) and home and businesses users. We already have a strong channel partners in this segment but we will be adding few more strong partners focused on A3 segment,” said Singh.

This launch is the second one in Asia Pacific after the last week launch of these printer in China. These products were first launch during HP Global Partner Conference last month in Boston. According to company official, India is a significant market for HP and year-on-year it has seen tremendous growth here and this launch is a testimony to this.

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