Samsung along with Kodak are new players to the already crowded printing market.While Kodak is trying to make a name for itself by offering low-cost ink, Samsung instead wants to be the most stylish.
In the next two months, Samsung will be releasing desktop and MFP printers that do not look like traditional office printers. The products called the ML1630 and SCX 4500 will have a piano-black finish to them 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. We want to be recognized in the printer market as we are in the LCD flat panel monitor space,” 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 email and print but in a high glossy box with Blue Eye light scanning technology that reveals the progress of a scan.
Deonandan said these products along with Samsung’s flat panel monitors, LCD and plasma TVs were built to be attractive.
“Samsung today wants to concentrate on style and wants to have the most stylish product over competitors,” she said.
Deonandan added that the printers along with its flat-panel monitors with a high glossy bezel design are not just for the home market, but also the corporate market and SOHO businesses.
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. By year’s end, it was the No. 1 selling flat panel on the market. Park said the reason for the success was “just plain esthetics.”
Buoyed by the success, Samsung decided to expand its piano-black finish to all of its IT and CE products.
“TVs, printers, computer monitors are fixtures in the office and in homes. They 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.
Deonandan also said that with the demand for the Vista operating system increasing Samsung has decided to release larger flat-panel monitors.
The standard for Vista is a 22-inch screen, she said. Samsung will also release a 24-inch, 27-inch and 30-inch models.The new SyncMaster 226BW has a two millisecond response time and a dynamic contrast ratio of 2,000 to one.
Recently Samsung was chosen by officials of the World Cyber Games because of its response time. “Gamers are looking for speed of play with monitors,” Deonandan said.These monitors will have curved edges, high glossy bezel, LED blue light controls and come with an adjustable head.
Gone are the silver and black monitor models. “These are similar to LCD TVs,” she said. The price range is $400 to $2,000 and they will feature Cold Cathode Fluoresent Lamp technology, which brightens 97 per cent of the colour gamut compared to previous models that were at 82 per cent.