Hewlett-Packard's Joshi Bullish On Printer Market
January 4, 2010 - In an interview with Bloomberg News, Hewlett-Packard executive Vyomesh Joshi, who leads HP's Imaging and Printing Group, said he believes the printer market is ready for recovery in 2010, with customers who've held off buying in 2009 finally taking the plunge in 2010.
Joshi acknowledges that 2009 was tough for sales of printers and MFPs, but adds that supply sales were still healthy: "... supplies sales were fine. What that means is that printing is healthy—even with economic pressure, customers are still printing the content." Last month, HP CEO Mark Hurd said the company's printer-imaging business is "poised for recovery and getting on the attack," with HP forecasting "double-digit" growth in printer shipments for 2010's first quarter. Overall, however, HP forecasts that printer revenue will remain the same or rise two percent in 2010. Joshi says he intends to wrest market share from competitors Lexmark International and Eastman Kodak.
While HP is the world's leading imaging hardware vendor, the Imaging and Printing Group has reported five consecutive quarter of declining sales. HP has sought to weather the economic crisis with cost-reduction measures such as reducing inventory. One unexpected result was that HP had a shortage of laser printers. Another cost-reduction measure it's put into effect is to ship printers and MFPs directly from its Asian factories to retailers, as opposed to first routing the products through its own distribution centers.
One thing that won't change is pricing, with Joshi noting, "We don't need to cut prices. In the market right now, our product, compared with any of our competition, is much better in terms of the innovation, in terms of ease of use, in terms of quality, in terms of connectivity. That's what the customer will be looking at."
The complete Bloomberg news story may be accessed here: