Year | Winner |
2000 | HP |
1999 | HP |
1998 | HP |
1997 | HP |
1996 | HP |
1995 | HP |
1994 | HP |
We’ve seen healthy competition in inkjet printers this
year, with five contenders making it to the User’s Choice Club. HP continues
its hold on mindshare for the seventh year in a row. Epson remains second for
the second consecutive year. Canon has crept up the rankings a bit, while Apollo
and Lexmark managed to make a mark.
Where currently favored brands are concerned, most
respondents in households and establishments use HP inkjet printers again. Epson
is a distant second too, followed by the rest. However, competition in this
segment is very strong, causing printer manufacturers to add innovative
features, and fight fierce marketing battles.
Inkjet Printers |
|
User's Choice Club | UPI |
HP | 100 |
Epson | 30 |
Canon | 11 |
Wipro-Apollo | 7 |
TVSE-Lexmark | 7 |
Users have indicated quality as their prime criterion for
choosing a brand. Speaking of quality, one innovation added to printers was
photo-quality printouts. The prime method was to add an extra color ink
cartridge to the printer for this purpose. In fact, there’s been fierce
competition in photo-quality inkjets–giving consumers the advantage of getting
good quality at a decent price.
HP is particularly strong in the south as the preferred
brand. As before, Epson is the next most preferred, but its mindshare in the
north appears quite weak.
The biggest disadvantage of inkjet printers has been their
high running costs. To counter this, all printer companies are also making a
huge noise about the ink-saving features in their printers–software controls
to let you find out the levels of ink in the cartridge, separate cartridges for
each color, and so on. Most companies are making serious efforts to ensure that
users only buy genuine cartridges. Epson has cut down its cartridge prices and
has special packs for India. HP bundles free cartridges with different printers
and has also tied up with Kendriya Bhandar, so that genuine cartridges are
available at steady prices.
What happens next in this highly competitive market? Prices have come to bare
minimum levels, and innovative features have been added like there’s no
tomorrow. The future seems quite interesting, let’s see what
"prints" next year.