Hewlett-Packard To Announce Copier Market Entry Today - FT
Sunday November 16, 7:15 pm ET
TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - News) will announce Monday the first of a new line of high-end corporate copiers that will intensify competition between the computer and printer maker and copier-making rivals such as Xerox Corp. (NYSE:XRX - News) and Ricoh Co. , the Financial Times reported on its Web site.
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The move is part of HP's push to expand its printing business beyond traditional markets, the FT reported.
HP already offers commercial printers with scanners, but industry observers say they are not fast enough to cope with the big workloads typical in large corporate environments.
The first products in the new range are expected to be announced this week at Comdex, the computer industry trade show in Las Vegas, the report said. HP officials declined to comment.
Low-end units that print fewer than 30 pages a minute account for most of the $17-billion U.S. copier market, but high-end multifunction printer/copiers that print up to 80 pages a minute are increasingly in demand.
Printer rival Lexmark International Inc. (NYSE:LXK - News) , as well as copier makers such as Xerox, Ricoh and Canon Inc. , are all vying for a stake in the high- end multifunction copier market. HP is seen to have a strong hand in the sector because copiers are being increasingly hooked into corporate networks.
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