EPSON Philippines is expecting to sustain its strong double-digit revenue growth at 19 percent by end of fiscal year 2018, mainly driven by strong end-user demand for both its inkjet printer and projector business portfolios.
While this is a modest increase from last year’s 17 percent, Epson Philippines Marketing Division Director Eduardo Bonoan said “it’s still looked at as phenomenal” as compared to the performance of other companies in the same field.
“So it’s still a better year [for us]. I think the important thing to note is we have the largest market share that no printer and projector manufacturers have seen here in the Philippines. So we’re really dominant,” he told reporters during the unveiling of the company’s latest innovations at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, last week.
As proof the brand has been accepted as a market leader, 1 out of either 2 inkjet printers or projectors sold nationwide is from Epson. The brand accounted for 55 percent of the local inkjet printer market for the first half of this year, the IDC Hardcopy Peripherals Report said.
“We somehow hit the sweet spot with regards an inkjet product institutions could rely on,” the top executive said.
Before, he said inkjet printers used in institutions were characterized by the high cost of inks, and speed and quality concerns.
“But now, I think, we’ve already debunked that. Since then, our growth reversed its trend. Before, our growth was in homes. Now, institutions are the dominant users of inkjet. So that seems to be the trend, especially for high-volume users,” Bonoan said.
“Based on what we measured sometime back, we believe that 80 [percent] to 90 percent of our users are institutions and the remaining 10 percent will probably be homes,” he added.
Per the same study, Epson CISS/Ink Tank printers have achieved a global phenomenal sales of 30 million units for fiscal year 2018.
Epson also partook of 55-percent share of the domestic market for the second quarter of this year as reflected in the latest FutureSource Projector Report.
The significant preference for these products could be attributed to the Philippines’s continued economic expansion, which stood at 6 percent from April to June 2018.