Canon and Epson dominate Japanese home printer market
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With the busiest season for home printers upon us, this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into home printers has some interesting figures about what people are doing with their printers.
Demographics
Between the 2nd and 7th of December 2009 1,052 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.1% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.
I’ve set this translation up in my publishing queue as instead of working on my blog tonight I too am printing out my nengajo New Year postcard addresses for the coming Year of the Tiger on my five year old Canon.
Research results
First of all, 973 people, or 92.5% of the sample, had a printer at home. They were asked the following.
Q1: Who is the maker of your newest printer? (Sample size=973)
Canon 43.6% Epson 41.6% Hewlett-Packard 6.4% Brother 4.0% Lexmark 0.8% NEC 0.8% Sharp 0.8% Dell 0.5% Ricoh 0.3% Fuji-Xerox 0.0% Other 0.0% Don’t know 1.1% Q2: Which of the following do you use your printer for? (Sample size=973, multiple answer)
Votes Percentage Printing New Year postcard (nengajo), summer greetings, etc 787 80.9% Printing web pages 782 80.4% Printing Word, Excel, other documents 602 61.9% Printing digital camera photos 542 55.7% Printing reports, other text files 430 44.2% Printing PDFs 338 34.7% Printing mail 331 34.0% Printing CD, DVD labels 247 25.4% Printing address on envelopes, labels 188 19.3% Printing mobile phone potographs 173 17.8% Printing business cards 118 12.1% Other 13 1.3% Never printed anything 4 0.4% Next, 714 people had either upgraded or bought an extra printer. They were asked the following.
Q3: For how long did you use your previous printer? (Sample size=714, multiple answer)
One year 3.6% Two years 12.9% Three years 23.8% Four years 15.3% Five years 19.9% Six years 5.3% Seven years 3.4% Eight years 1.7% Nine years 0.6% Ten or more years 2.0% Don’t know 11.6%
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I am not surprised at all that Canon and Epson are heading the charts; both being Japanese majors. Not only attributing to the geographical relationship, I feel that both these printers have earned the right to be where they are today.
Here in UK, Canon is one of the top manufacturers followed by HP and then Epson for home market. The difference between the two markets as I see it is the legend of HP that has garnered consumers for so many years, and people still buy it despite the dwindling quality.
One brand that I expected to make inroads globally is Kodak. Surprisingly, it is not in the picture, both in UK and Japan.
Tom Walker
Printer Expert
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