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EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Dec 6, 1999

"There are still barriers to the acceptance of color in business such as the cost of acquisition, print speed of currently available color printers, print quality/durability and, increasingly, cost of operation," says Paula Bursley, senior industry analyst for Dataquest's Printers North America program. "One of the most significant barriers to color printing is that most users don't have a need to print most documents in color. These two elements -- need and appropriate products -- must come together for the widespread acceptance and use of color printers."

Hewlett-Packard was named the primary color printer vendor by slightly more than 80 percent of respondents, compared with almost 78 percent last year. Epson was the second-most popular color printer vendor, followed by Canon.

Dataquest analysts say vendors must develop strategies to educate the user base on the benefits of color printers. "Equally important, vendors must develop color printers that are competitively positioned against their monochrome counterparts and combat the market barriers," Bursley says. "Vendors wishing to continue to compete in the business printing marketplace will need to develop a complete portfolio of color printing solutions."

Almost 81 percent of the color printers at the sites surveyed were ink jets. About 16 percent were color laser printers, up slightly from 13 percent in 1998. "Color lasers are now much more aggressively priced and manufacturers have been working to address some of the barriers to acceptance like speed and paper handling capabilities," Bursley says. "This said, the complexity of the technology and cost of operation are still significant factors that are limiting larger growth."