quote:Sharp went another direction with its A4 MFPs and positioned its Frontier line as a competitor against both A3 Copiers and A4 Printers – offers major HW discounts from A3 copiers. Not sure if you noticed, but the Frontier C311/C401's shipments were far higher in Q1 than in Q2. Not sure if this is due to initial "deliveries" to dealers in Q1, while Q2 was actually from sales and orders from dealers to restock inventories.
Does anyone see these systems beating out A3 color MFPs or gaining overall market share from Seg. 3 A3 color MFPs?
I havn't seen one placement of the frontier in my territory yet. But that doesn't mean they aren't out there.
I see the whole copier industry making a shift to A$ devices in the next 24 months or less, they have too.
Price is the driving factor, I've heard it all about A4's, such as "A4's can't hold up to heavy volume", oh yea then why do I see laser printers with hundreds of thousands of prints on them and they weigh under 100lbs? Heck, I just came from an account that has 180K on a Ricoh MP161SPF, and they did it all in a little over a year. Rumor has it Ricoh will be launching thier own A4 in a few months and as stated in a previous post here Sharp will intro a 62ppm and 70ppm A4. When an if the economy gets betterm buyers are still going to be shell shocked and will go after the A4's in droves! My advise hook up with Sharp, Sammy or Muratec and protect your base and consumables with these units.
While I don't agree with Sharp's marketing of the frontier to two channels, I doi understand that it's do or die for them and they need to make a dent in the market ASAP!
I have at least 10 A4's in the field that have replaced A3's and when it comes right down to it, if the solutions fits for them, then I'm selling the A3 over the A4 while I still have the advantage.