A Market Place Study Of Colour Printers

The printer manufacturing current market seems being a booming one. Manufacturers are no doubt eyeing expansion and coming up with newer items to capture the burgeoning current market. The manufacturers are interested although in the colour -printer sector for purely reasons of expansion. There is stiff competition between the makers as all are concentrating to keep the costs low to capture the industry. It need to be said here that although inside the monochrome department Hewlett-Packard co. are the market leaders, the reigning company inside colour segment still remains undecided.

However the future with the colour printer current market is purported to be a bright one according to those investing in these companies. The investors are significantly optimistic, as these printers, applying four times the toner cyan, magenta, yellow, and black of a monochrome printer, will produce pictures of a very much greater high quality. The industry, currently a billion dollar industry, will increase manifold.

Adding on to its solution range, printing giant Lexmark introduced its c52x series, which included the c524n last June. Earlier there was a huge gap in its colour line up-there was merely the low- end c510 using a capacity of printing about 8 colour and 30 monochrome pictures in a single minute which wasn't all that fast. There also existed, side-by-side, the high-end c762 which, though having a greater speed, was quite much much more high-priced, thereby tough to afford for the smaller offices and home customers. As there was no other merchandise catering to the demands on the customers the rivals of Lexmark had an edge over it.

The introduction of Lexmark's c524n nonetheless changed things.

They introduced this item having a really small cost range, thereby making it affordable. Offering a dpi resolution of 1200*1200, this network ready colour laser printer has an outstanding colour output and can print up to twenty pages per minute. The incredibly first page might be printed in as little as 13seconds. The design has a monthly maximum duty cycle of 65000 pages, which is quite impressive. The new c524 also reduces the time taken by print jobs considerably as it includes a 437.5MHz processor and 128Mbytes of memory. The memory can be expanded up to 576, which decreases the waiting time taken for print jobs. Moreover, colour care technology and Lexmark coverage estimator support in managing the cost involved in utilizing colour toner. The design, weighing 57 pounds, is 17.3 inches wide, 19 inches high and 20.2 deep. With the product also comes a CD consisting with the user guide plus the printer software, a power cable, a paper exit extension tray, set up sheet and toner cartridges for cyan, yellow, magenta and black. The solution has a one-year warranty period for on site repair.

It goes without saying that that outsourcing of IT and consumer electronic items lower manufacturing fees of the solution, which helps lower the costs on the produced incredibly good. The question is how minimal have to the producers retain their profit margins in order to stay within the race in today's colour printing industry?

The current analysis lab examined the c524n at a unit volume of 1,20,000 units under the assumption that the design was created in china. An analysis was made in the procurement prices of commodity components, manufacturing expenses of fabricated components and location labour rates. The production cost was estimated to be around 265 / unit. The cost distribution showed the expense from the printer mechanism and its assembly being about 51. The electronics and assembly account for 60. Other charges included laser power supply, consumables assembly, fuser assembly, paper assembly, control panel assembly electronics assembly, final arrangements, etc.

At the time of launching the merchandise, the solution was supposed to become priced at 390. However, Lexmark priced the solution at nearly half with the originally intended value at some places. To maximize its revenue, the company in a clever move, outfitted the toner with several toner cartridges. The toner content was increased or decreased according for the budget from the customer. The a lot more costly models containing additional toner catered towards demands on the enterprise segment whilst the lower priced models with low yield cartridges were ideal for small offices and also residence users.

The product, being suitably priced, was a fantastic success, perfectly fitted to meet the needs with the buyers plus the suppliers and compete with its competitors inside lucrative colour printer marketplace. Lexmark claimed the print high quality was Photorealistic. On account of its chemically processed, spherical toner delivering a 1200*1200 dpi resolution and also because the new print head four lasers in one unit using a mirror. The machine enabled Lexmark to take on the enterprise market as well as their rivals, specifically Hewlett-Packard.