Monitor maker sets its sights on the already over-crowded printer market.In the next two months, Samsung will be releasing desktop and MFP printers that do not look like traditional office printers. The ML1630 and SCX 4500 will have a piano-black finish and are intended to be hidden on top of a desk or at the side of a desk, according to Lisa Deonandan, product trainer of Samsung Canada’s CE division.
“A lot of our competitors do not focus on style. We are driving to become a tier 1 brand,” Deonandan said.
These units are also one-third the size of traditional printers and will start at $249. The ML1630 looks similar to a desktop PC and can be placed under a flat-screen monitor, she added.
Meanwhile, the SCX 4500 MFP will have all the same features as other printers in its class such as copy, scan, scan to e-mail and print but in a high glossy box with Blue Eye light scanning technology that reveals the progress of a scan.
“Samsung wants to concentrate on style and wants to have the most stylish product over competitors,” Deonandan said.
Brad Hughes, senior research analyst for hardcopy peripherals at IDC Canada, said Samsung should not limit itself to just a piano-black colour.
He added that offering looks and colour is not the primary way to make sales. Typically, Hughes said, printers are business buys and price is the issue.
“I’m not sure it’ll set the world on fire, but anything you do to get your leg up in the marketplace, why not? As long as you can financially support it,” he said.
Bob Park, head of strategic marketing for Samsung Canada, said the idea to create a line of products with a piano-black finish started about two years ago when the company launched a flat panel TV with piano-black finish.
Despite its eye-catching look and the fact it was the only TV of its kind on the market, Samsung did not expect much from the product but by year’s end, it was the No. 1 selling flat panel TV on the market. Park said the reason for the success was “just plain esthetics.”
Buoyed by this success, Samsung decided to expand its piano-black finish to all of its IT and CE products. “TVs, printers, computer monitors are… more a part of the furniture than a device,” he said.
Samsung’s goal with its piano-black finish is for it to fit the lifestyle and technology needs of customers, Park added.
Hughes considers Samsung as one of the top four laser printer vendors in Canada.
“It looks like they’ll build a dealer and VAR network to take advantage of the printers they introduced last summer because they’re more complicated buys,” he said.
