Epson to get more aggressive in India

At a printer cartridge factory visit in Hirooka, senior Seiko Epson Corp
offi-cials said that India is going to be a major focus area for the company. It
would have special plans to increase its market share from the present 20
percent. Without giving away many details, officials said that some of the steps
would include review of the company's pricing models for pigment ink compared
to dye-based ink, to enhance availa-bility of photo quality ink cartridges.

Epson also intends to get more aggressive with its cam-paign to deal with
counterfeit consumables, which has over 20 percent market share in some of the
developed coun-tries and about 50 percent market share in emerging eco-nomies.
There are also plans to increase awareness about genuine Epson consumables.

According to CEO of Epson's Inkjet Printer and Photo Product Operations
Division, Takao Mimura, "Epson will actively push dot matrix printers,
single fun-ction inkjet printers, and low-cost multi function printers in
India." The company is plann-ing about 20 percent growth in revenue and 50
percent volume growth in emerging econo-mies, including India.

Ibrahim Ahmad

Matsumoto (The author was hosted in Matsumoto, Japan by Epson)