Minolta South Africa has topped the colour copier/printer market for the fourth consecutive year with its share in the colour market growing from 35.1% in 2003 to 43.8% in 2004, according to the results of the recent InfoSource Spring 2005 survey.
Minolta SA colour division manager, Marianna Gdanis, says the results show Minolta SA secured a sizeable 57% chunk of Segment 3 (13 - 29 pages per minute (ppm)), which experienced an overall 60% growth, a 24% share of Segment 4 (30 - 49ppm), which grew by 53% overall and a healthy 46% share of Segment 5 (50+ppm), a sector that grew by a whopping 236%.
"Minolta SA`s colour division experienced an overall 78% growth last year, mirroring the global explosion of the colour market and the ongoing demand for faster, better quality and value-for-money colour devices. We expect this trend to continue in the foreseeable future and would like to grow our colour sales by another 50% over the next 12 months," she says.
The massive growth in higher volume colour copiers demonstrated that colour is no longer a luxury in business. It has become a necessity. The market is beginning to understand that their business documentation - quotations, presentations, proposals, mailshots, flyers, pamphlets - will have the highest impact on their intended targets audiences in colour.
"They are realising that colour communicates faster than black and white, that people are more willing to read a document that is in colour, that colour improves comprehension and recognition and that it accelerates learning," says Gdanis.
Gdanis says in the past producing colour documents was a costly exercise that offered little flexibility. "Companies were confined to analogue colour copiers that were large and slow, inkjet printers that were slow, low quality, costly and inflexible, and colour laser printers that were slow and costly.
"Where businesses needed high volumes of colour documents printed, stapled, punched or collated, they would outsource the jobs at a high cost," she says.
Gdanis says the introduction of the Konica Minolta Bizhub C350 was instrumental in pushing colour sales up in 2004. "The C350 was Minolta`s offering to a new market segment (Segment 3) that emerged about two years ago to accommodate the growing demand for colour in business.
"The office colour multifunctional device was born, offering a low cost of ownership and all the functionality of a monochrome multifunctional machine. It was faster and more economical and offered versatile finishing options," she says.
With the C350, Konica Minolta offers a multifunctional device with a full eight-bit colour engine and is modelled on the award-winning CF2002. The bizhub C350 was awarded the prestigious BERTL`s BEST award in the category "Best A3- capable Office Colour MFP (20-30ppm)" for 2004. It differs from its competitors in that most competitor devices in this segment are monochrome-based machines with one-bit or four-bit colour engines, which severely limits the quality of their colour output.
"In addition, most competitor devices have to calibrate themselves every 80 -100 pages resulting in as much as a five-minute delay in productivity. The auto-calibration process effectively halves the engine speeds, which means the advertised engine speeds of these devices are not really a true reflection of their actual speeds. The Bizhub C350, on the other hand, is a full colour device that constantly calibrates itself and does not delay productivity," says Gdanis.
Share
Editorial contacts