Laser Printers

There is a little bit of a surprise in this one horse market this year. Epson manages to break into the Users Choice club. IBM, Samsung, Canon, Lexmark and Xerox got some support, but nowhere near enough to make it to the Users' Choice club. 



Of course, it goes without saying that HP is the clear winner. What should seriously worry the other players in the market is the “to HP” migration in the brand switch matrix (look under the HP column). Significant percentages of those who currently own non-HP brands are likely to move to HP next time. 

We have been debating for some time now whether to continue with this segment, given the one horse race that it is. This year, we are taking the first step in that direction. We are introducing a new category called Workgroup / Laser MFD. Given middling to large workloads, it is expected that the laser MFD will take up significant shares of the laser printer market. The Laser MFD segment has been around for some time, but has gained prominence only in the last couple of years.

Our first year with the Laser MFD segment shows a picture that is very similar to the laser printer market, but at least, there are more names in the Users' Choice club. So, most likely, it is goodbye to this category that we have been tracking since 1995.