Fuji Xerox goes down-market, eyes small, mid-size regional businesses
As Fuji Xerox Corporation moves towards solutions and services, it is expanding its software-equipped, low-end printers into the Asia-Pacific small and medium-sized business (SMB) market, which has been growing at a 30-per-cent clip for 10 years.
"We decided to go to SMBs, small printers for SMBs. Fuji Xerox is not any more only high-end machines," Tadahito Yamamoto, president of the Japanese company, said yesterday.
Low-end A4 multifunction printers are expected to enjoy annual growth of 14 per cent in gross installations from 2009-13 in the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan and China, according to Fuji Xerox Marketing Research Group.
China is likely to rise 22 per cent while Japan is projected to expand 5 per cent.
During the transition that began about four years ago, Fuji Xerox is embedding itself in Asia-Pacific countries through value offers with solutions, products and services, and through volume focusing on low-end products and indirect channels such as dealers.
"Asia-Pacific is growing," said Katsuhiko Yanagawa, senior vice president of Fuji Xerox and president of its international business group.
Based on an average forecast of eight research houses in Japan, the region excluding Japan and China is expected to see gross domestic product increasing at an annual rate of 4.7 per cent from 2006-13. China is expected to expand annually by 12 per cent in the same period.
Apart from the value and volume strategy, Fuji Xerox is upgrading its Asia-Pacific business infrastructure by integrating its scattered customer call centres into China, Singapore and Australia, online support of remote services and corporate social responsibility initiatives.
The region’s revenue for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2013, is expected to be 2.5 times that of fiscal year 2003.
Yamamoto said Fuji Xerox was not ready to get into the consumer market.
"We are still targeting B2B [business-to-business]. We concentrate on companies and target companies."
Companies need products as well as services, he said.
Three or four years ago, Fuji Xerox was known as a copier company selling machines only. Then, amid an increasing number of rivals, it changed to providing more services and solutions.
The company has changed its sales personnel, customer engineers, and research-and-development people from low-end to high-end.
"About 30 per cent of sales [people] are changed," Yamamoto said.
"We improve communications for clients. We are no longer a copier company. We are a solutions and services company."
