This Week in Imaging: A Look at Who’s on the Home-Office Bandwagon

by Kathleen Wirth · January 28, 2022

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been two distinct trends in the document-imaging industry: companies have introduced markedly fewer printers and MFPs, and companies have either strengthened their focus on the home-office segment or introduced new offerings for it.

Several companies already of course have strong home-office lines: Brother, Canon, Epson, HP Inc., and Lexmark. Although we haven’t seen Lexmark place too much focus on the home office in their marketing, Lexmark has OEMed several of its A4 home-office-appropriate models to Ricoh and Xerox.

Ricoh

Ricoh’ USA’s small-business Web page is primarily for desktop printers and MFPs that can be equipped with optional cloud connectivity, mobile printing, and advanced document security.

Sharp

Sharp USA, which has traditionally been A3-MFP focused, now has a Web page devoted to Technology for Your Home Office. Sharp appears focused on providing equipment and services to enterprises, which then provide them to home workers. Sharp’s home-worker category includes desktop printers and MFPs, including Sharp Remote Device Manager (SRDM) for managing printers and MFPs remotely or onsite by IT administrators and service providers, and there’s also laptops and computer monitors.

The company also offers printer/MFP, supplies, and laptops bundles, as well as security and remote monitoring, all of which are available on a monthly subscription basis.

Xerox

Interestingly, while Xerox has now largely been focused on the office segment, back in the year 2000, it made a move into low-priced home-office inkjet market (remember the “Blue Dog” campaign?), but then exited it.

Today, Xerox has a Web page dedicated to Home Office Printers and Scanners. For home-office users, the company emphasizes that its home office printers are designed to be easily set up and maintained by the user, with no need for IT involvement.

Kyocera Document Solutions U.S.A. and Konica Minolta U.S.A. both also offer a range of A4 printers and MFPs, but don’t focus on marketing them for the home office as other companies do.

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