This document was revised on 24 September 2010. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com.

Gartner's Magic Quadrant for vendors of multifunction products (MFPs) and printers worldwide serves as a guide for midsize to large organizations to identify and evaluate technology providers that deliver MFP and printer products and services. Gartner customers are increasingly seeking print providers that can match their global footprint and become their partners in helping them with their printing and document management needs. Globalization has only accelerated this trend. In addition, the recession of 2008 and 2009 put a sense of urgency on most print managers to reduce costs and gain control of their printer fleets, and at the same time, reduce the environmental impact of organization's print environment.

The main products in this Magic Quadrant are page printer and MFP devices, but include line inkjet devices as well, and are primarily targeted at office and central reprographics department (CRD) or staffed copy room.

All the technology providers in this Magic Quadrant provide MFPs and printers, but their capabilities and offerings vary, depending on their unique company strategy, global reach, partnerships, alliances, technology research and development, and a host of other variables. This Magic Quadrant's print providers fell into three categories. Canon, HP, Ricoh and Xerox are in the Leaders quadrant because of their more-complete hardware, software and service offerings and geographic reach. In the Challengers quadrant, many of the providers offer excellent product, software and services, but their range in many cases is more limited than leaders, and their ability to execute on a worldwide basis lags behind the leaders. Finally, providers in the Niche Players quadrant — such as Dell, Oce and Oki — have a more-narrow focus approach to the market, either from a geographic or from a product and/or service perspective. It should be noted that Oce was acquired in early 2010 by Canon, but for this analysis, it was treated as an independent provider.

As an informed customer, you must first have a clear understanding of your requirements, and in conjunction with other research, including inquiry with Gartner analysts, you should base your selection on the provider that will best meet your specific needs, rather than on the provider that falls into the Leaders quadrant; this means choosing the provider that is best for your unique printing needs. Similarly, providers that fall into the Niche Players quadrant may also be able to effectively address your needs, depending on your specific geography and price point constraints, as well as other factors.

Printers and MFPs historically have been the domain of various stakeholders within most organizations. Copiers and MFPs are handled by facilities or other business units, while printers are the domain of IT managers. But with the convergence of these devices, organizations are simplifying contracts and unifying management of their printer fleet. The subjects of this Magic Quadrant are the technology providers that sell, service, support and provide printing and document solutions to customers of these products.

The market for printers and MFPs is well-established and has reached maturity in many geographies, such as Japan, North America and Western Europe. As such, print providers' product offerings are increasingly difficult to differentiate, as features and functionality vary only slightly. The traditional speeds and feeds for typical office printing, such as output quality (for example, dots per inch [dpi]) and engine speed, have given way to the hardware's ability to integrate and deploy software applications that connect them to the company's document management systems. Remote monitoring capabilities, diagnostics, security and other factors are becoming the true differentiators. These printing devices, which need sophisticated software tools for better management and control, are being sold with attached services and are increasingly a part of the purchase decision criteria by many organizations.

Although mature, the market for printers and MFPs is nonetheless very large. In 2009, 112 million printers and MFPs (which included smart MFPs [SMFPs]) were sold worldwide. The hardware market alone is valued at $48 billion in end-user spending. While the great recession of 2009 put a big dent on the printer industry, especially in mature countries and some emerging regions, such as Eastern Europe, we expect this market to return to growth in 2010 and beyond, driven by growth in key emerging countries, such as Brazil and China. The traditional copier segment, dominated by A3 devices (those that can print in 11 x 17-inch format), continues to transition toward smaller footprint devices, such as A4 MFPs, which print in the traditional letter-size format and which cost a fraction of their larger cousins. At the same time, many of the smaller devices can have a much-higher cost per page, as well as lower duty cycles. Organizations are therefore advised to carefully consider and understand their printing requirements and measure them against the provider's product offerings. Gartner recommends a balanced deployment of A3 and A4 devices.

The promise of the "paperless" office is still a myth, even in today's digital age. The reality is that most business processes still rely on paper output, for records, transactions or simply for better readability. Virtually all organizations are still using printing devices for their daily business activities, such as contracts, statements, presentations, reports and other office output. While we expect that digital alternatives to paper will change the way we create and consume content, Gartner expects that the need to print, copy, fax and scan will remain throughout and well beyond the three to five years that customers will operate the equipment they deploy today.

The traditional office multifunction device and printer is an indispensable tool to most office environments. But their role and capabilities have advanced in the past several years, from simple output devices, to serving in many cases as "on-ramps" and "offramps" to the organization's documents and information stored on corporate networks. Many of today's MFPs can be called smart MFPs, because they can be used to capture and render paper-based information directly into enterprise content management, records management, ERP systems and document management systems. End users, MFP hardware manufacturers and their partners are increasingly focusing more of their investments on the development of applications for SMFPs that automate paper-intensive business processes and on the creation of customer-specific document workflows, both electronic as well as traditional paper.

For the purpose of this Magic Quadrant, we define the market as consisting of providers of printer and MFP products that are capable of serving the needs of Gartner clients in the office and on-site production space (excluding high-volume, off-site production operations, consumer products, wide format and specialty printing, such as bar code and label printing). Print providers included in this analysis understand the major trends impacting the printer industry, such as the increasing adoption of A4/letter (8.5 x 11-inch)-based MFPs, decreasing page volumes in some segments of the market, and the battle between marking technologies — such as inkjet and page (laser) — in certain office segments. In addition, providers included in this Magic Quadrant must understand and be able to address:

• The environmental impact of printing — This includes the devices' energy consumption, as well as the usage, reduction and recycling of paper and supplies. In fact, in this document, Gartner expanded on the number of environmental criteria used to evaluate the providers.

• Account management and problem/service resolution issues — As organizations grow larger and their needs become more complex, print providers' ability to service and deliver on their promise becomes ever more important.

• Fleet management, monitoring and integration — Organizations are seeking more than output devices: They need print providers with the technology and capabilities of installing, monitoring, and routing and tracking device information and documents throughout the organization.

Providers that meet all the following criteria are included in this Magic Quadrant:

• Provides the following equipment to the commercial market — office classes of product (11 to 90 pages per minute [ppm]), as well as supply sales via direct or indirect distribution channels:

  • Monochrome and color MFPs (laser, light-emitting diode, solid ink and line inkjet technologies are included)

  • Must sell the above-mentioned products in at least two of the following major geographies in which Gartner customers are concentrated: Asia/Pacific; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); North America; and Latin America. Each region should represent at least 15% of the provider's unit shipments in each geography, according to Gartner market statistics.

• Provides technical support and services, either directly or via their channel partners:

  • Provides Tier 1 and Tier 2 advanced technical support (system engineer or factory level), either directly or via their channel partners

  • Provides help desk support, either directly or via their channel partners

  • Performs emergency maintenance, break/fix and preventive maintenance, either directly or via their channel partners

The worldwide list of printer and MFP providers exceeds 25. While they all have unique capabilities and value propositions, we have excluded some providers based on the following criteria:

• Dealers or service providers that do not manufacture or sell their own branded products (dealers and resellers)

• Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that do not sell their own branded products in the worldwide market

• Dealers or service providers that provide only equipment reselling and service functions

• Dealers and service providers that provide only managed print services (MPS) or other outsourcing functions and do not manufacture their own equipment

• Wholly owned subsidiaries of larger technology providers (for example, Global Imaging Systems [GIS])

• Two-tier distributors and resellers (for example, Ingram Micro and Tech Data)

• Software technology providers that enable printer, copier and MFP functionality (for example, EFI and Nuance)

• Lack of inquiry from Gartner clients

Two providers were added in this study compared with the 2008 Magic Quadrant to better reflect the competitive landscape of the printer and MFP market. Kyocera Mita is a well-established player in this market, owning much of its technology and competing particularly in many small to midsize organizations. Oki focuses primarily on printers and A4 printer-based MFPs, and it is an established manufacturer with a long track record in the printer industry.

No printer providers were dropped from the 2010 Magic Quadrant.

Gartner evaluates MFP and printer providers on the quality and efficacy of the processes, systems, methods and procedures that enable their products' performance to be competitive, efficient and effective, and to positively impact revenue, retention and reputation. Ultimately, they are judged on their ability to successfully capitalize or execute on their vision. Gartner verifies an MFP and printer provider's capability to deliver based on direct feedback from extensive interviews with its clients, from our own databases and experience and from other provided customer references. Each criterion is weighted high, standard or low in importance and scored accordingly. Table 1 shows the criteria for evaluating providers' ability to execute.

Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by providers that compete in and serve the defined market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets and skills, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definition.

Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy and Organization): Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood of the business unit to continue to invest in the product, offer the product and advance the state of the art in the organization's portfolio of products.

Sales Execution/Pricing: The provider or channel capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.

Market Responsiveness and Track Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the provider's history of responsiveness.

Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This mind share can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotions, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.

Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be successful with the products evaluated. This includes the ways in which customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, and service-level agreements (SLAs).

Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, such as skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.

Gartner evaluates MFP and printer providers on their ability to convincingly articulate logical statements about current and future market direction, innovation, customer needs, and competitive forces and how well they map onto the Gartner position. Ultimately, they are rated on their understanding of how market forces can be exploited to create opportunity for the provider and for its clients. Each criterion is weighted high, standard or low in importance and is scored accordingly. Table 2 shows the criteria for evaluating providers' completeness of vision.

Market Understanding: The provider's ability to understand buyers' wants and needs and to translate those into products and services. Providers that show the highest degree of vision listen to and understand buyers' wants and needs.

Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.

Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service and communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.

Offering (Product) Strategy: The provider's approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to requirements.

Business Model: The soundness and logic of the provider's underlying business proposition.

Vertical/Industry Strategy: The provider's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical markets.

Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, or defensive or preemptive purposes.

Geographic Strategy: The provider's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographic locations outside the "home" or native locations directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries, as appropriate for those locations and markets.

Leaders are the most capable in providing MFPs (including SMFPs), printers and the associated printing solutions and services, regardless of customer location. Providers in the Leaders quadrant offer the most extensive product portfolio relative to their peers, and they have the broad channel capability to deliver the products to customers where they want to procure them. Thus, leaders hold consistently high market share worldwide and are capable of delivering consistent service levels in the regions where Gartner customers are located. Leaders tend to have the deepest global capability and the inventiveness and resources, skills and vision to deliver superior levels of support to existing and future customers globally. Leaders have a proven track record of channeling R&D initiatives into products and solutions that customers need.

Challengers are very capable of selling printers and MFPs (including SMFPs) in the regions defined in the Inclusion Criteria section, but they lack the depth of product breadth, services and solution capabilities of the leaders, especially on a consistent worldwide basis. Challengers may demonstrate growth in market share and bids for large deals, typically the domain of providers in the Leaders quadrant. They are most likely to have invested in new capabilities and have introduced product features and solutions that distinguish them from providers in the Niche Players quadrant. Finally, challengers tend to be successful in selling to a lesser range of company sizes than leaders. As with the leaders, challengers are often mentioned as part of an RFP shortlist for Gartner clients for midsize and large deals.

Visionaries understand current market trends and know how to meet current market needs. They tend to be spot-on when it comes to the future needs of customers and are often specialists in creating new ways of solving unique customers' issues — especially in key vertical markets. While visionaries may not be able to deliver the full range of products, solutions and services to the broadest range of customers, they do understand those needs but lack the scale to reach the wide range that multinational companies and, by definition, the typical Gartner customer require. In contrast to previous Magic Quadrants, the 2010 study does not contain any print provider in the Visionaries quadrant.

Niche players tend to focus on delivering a narrower range of products, solutions and services to a narrower range of customer types (for example, in particular vertical industries or of a given size). Because of their limited range of product, solution and service capability, niche players often excel in their areas of specialty and are usually a more-affordable option to customers that match their unique capabilities. Niche players are oftentimes more flexible and responsive to customer needs because they tend to work on smaller, more-localized deals that have some degree of flexibility.

• This provider has one of the strongest alliance partnerships in the industry, for example, with HP. It also has deep pockets for technology and capability acquisition — most recently, its purchase of Oce. This means that customers have access to a wide set of hardware, software and solutions from a single provider.

• Canon has one of the strongest and most-diversified product portfolios in the industry, ranging from serial inkjet devices (used by many small businesses and even by some large organizations) to office page devices, production printers and presses. Canon enjoys a strong market share position across all the regions, holding the No. 3 position in the overall page technology segment in terms of units, as measured by Gartner's market statistics. Canon manufactures its own devices, and if HP page printer engines are included, this provider would be No. 1 worldwide in the overall page printer technology segment.

• Although Canon lost a major distribution partner in 2008 (IKON), its strong financial position has allowed this provider to make significant investments and innovate, especially in the midrange to high-end MFP and production space.

• Canon has a strong environmental leadership that is demonstrated in the design stages (for example, through use of the Life Cycle Assessment methodologies) and during the manufacturing process.

• Although Canon has a strong product portfolio, its unit market share in the growing page A4 MFP space is low compared with other manufacturers, particularly in key markets, such as North America.

• In office page printers, Canon also lags many competitors (with the exception of Japan, where it is the market leader). Canon ranks No. 4, behind HP, Samsung and Brother on a worldwide basis.

• Multiple and sometimes conflicting selling organizations (for example, Canon direct sales force and Canon Business Solutions) can create confusion among buyers, resulting in technical support and billing issues.

• One of the challenges of large portfolio companies is to get the right message across, and Web marketing is an important channel to do so. Canon's Web page can seem disjointed; customers may have difficulty accessing product information in a consistent manner, including pricing information. Canon has recently embarked on a revamping of its website strategy.

• One of Dell's main strengths lies in enhancing the overall customer experience through product development based on sourced printer engines. Dell adds value by incorporating standard features and functionality for easy deployment, particularly among smaller organizations.

• Dell's buying experience is among its main differentiators. Dell's website is clear and easy to navigate. For larger-enterprise customers, Dell provides good account management, with a fair amount of pricing and contract flexibility.

• Dell's direct model means that it is very close to its end users, and it allows this provider a rapid response and resolution of any problems, showing high customer satisfaction.

• Dell continues to be successful in leveraging its PC business, extending customer relationships by offering printers and MFPs, and providing clients a single point of purchase for many of their IT needs.

• Dell's product range is composed of predominantly A4 products for low print volumes. While Dell has added A3 printers to its range in some markets, such as Canada, the U.S. and Western Europe, the provider currently has no A3 MFPs in its portfolio, a requirement for most high-volume office printing.

• Although Dell sells in most geographies, its strength of presence varies greatly market to market, and the majority of its sales come from North America and Western Europe.

• Dell has been heavily investing in its printer offerings and has recently launched three new A4 SMFPs, but it currently doesn't have A3 SMFPs in its portfolio.

• HP has been the global printer and MFP market leader for a number of years. It has a very strong global market presence across most geographies, with the exception of Japan. In 2009, its unit market share exceeded 40%.

• HP has an extensive product portfolio, which was reinforced by the extended agreement with Canon that allows HP to sell Canon imageRUNNER products into HP MPS accounts in the first instance, and perhaps into other HP accounts thereafter.

• HP's Open Extensibility Platform (OXP) for SMFPs allows developers and customers to significantly improve document processes by moving page volume away from paper-based to electronic documents.

• HP is a leader in environmental sustainability in the printer industry. HP is a pioneer in supplies recycling, sponsoring recycling programs across its entire product line and in multiple geographies. HP is the first provider to implement a closed-loop remanufacturing process of supplies. This process has the potential to be extended to many more products beyond current consumer inkjet cartridges.

• Financially sound, HP is an organization that heavily invests in R&D and has very powerful marketing capabilities — among the strongest in the industry.

• Until the extended agreement with Canon, HP's A3 capabilities were limited, and time will tell about the success of this relationship.

• HP's hardware inventory shortage problems in 2009 and 2010 have negatively impacted customers; this break in service caused delays in product delivery and project rollouts.

• Some customers also experienced installation, preventive maintenance and offshore help desk issues during the last year. Gartner believes that these issues were a blip and that normal HP service is currently being resumed.

• Konica Minolta's 2009 worldwide unit market share in page A3 color MFP put this vendor in second position in this critical segment. Konica Minolta's unit global market share of MFPs — its core business — is larger in color (9.2% worldwide) than in monochrome (3.3%).

• Konica Minolta enjoys a good reputation for customer satisfaction, execution and product quality. Gartner's end-user client organizations, through our inquiry conversations with them, report satisfaction with the help and attention they receive from Konica Minolta.

• Konica Minolta has a good reputation among partners and customers for reliability extending across A3 and A4 products and production printers.

• Konica Minolta's product designs tend to be customer-centric, which helps it to better penetrate into large enterprises and government accounts, as evidenced, for example, by security solutions developed for federal government agencies.

• Konica Minolta has a weak presence in the A4 MFP segment (only 1% unit market share in 2009), which is increasingly important for office print buyers seeking to rationalize their printer fleets and to reduce costs.

• Konica Minolta struggles to differentiate its offering from some of its main competitors, such as Canon, Ricoh, Sharp and Toshiba. In the area of SMFPs, it is still viewed as a market follower rather than a leader, although recently it has been active signing on more partners. It launched its Web services offering, bEST, in 2008, several years behind its main competitors.

• Kyocera Mita has a long-standing track record for upholding environmental standards. Kyocera Mita has a unique manufacturing process for its printer and MFP drum units, resulting in long-lasting components that not only save customers money, but also translate into less waste generation.

• Kyocera Mita is a provider that focuses mostly on midmarket and some enterprise customers. This focus, along with the use of a strong survey methodology, and the work with its dealers, leads to the production customer-focused product designs.

• Kyocera Mita's product line enjoys a good reputation for reliability among its customers.

• Kyocera Mita has a very low unit market share in the page A4 MFP segment in most of the geographies. This can be attributed to its limited product range, which has several gaps; for example, it does not have products in monochrome page A4 MFPs above 31 ppm, and in color, it has only one model (below 20 ppm).

• Account management is good on the whole, but it can become stretched with larger organizations, especially global accounts that need similar consistent product offerings and servicing capabilities.

• Lexmark's approach to the market is to focus on key verticals, such as finance, healthcare, retail and manufacturing, among others, for which it has built a set of strong solutions that are at par or better than any of its competitors. This approach, coupled with strong investments in customer research and surveys, is reflected in the new breed of products that incorporates standard platforms, including SMFP functionality in a single-function page printer — a first in the industry.

• Lexmark is strong with IT resellers and has a strong channel to reach a wide range of customers in a dispersed geographic area.

• Lexmark enjoys a strong reputation in important vertical enterprise segments and is frequently shortlisted in RFPs reviewed by Gartner.

• Lexmark has product gaps in the higher-speed segments. It currently does not have A3 monochrome MFPs above 55 ppm or A3 color MFPs above 40 ppm, which are important for CRD and other high-volume print environments.

• Lexmark currently has a very low unit market share (0.4%) in the page A3 MFP space; however, it has a stronger focus on the A4 market.

• As a result of de-emphasizing its consumer inkjet business, Lexmark is more than $1 billion smaller than it was five years ago. The challenge for Lexmark is to recoup such revenue losses by transforming its business model in a mature and consolidating market.

• Oce has a very reputable and long-standing environmental track record. Oce has had a product and component reuse program for its Premia Class of remanufactured products for many years. It also incorporates paper manufacturing and sourcing as major components of its sustainability policy.

• Oce hardware products have a reputation for being durable and reliable among customers. Oce enjoys a high level of customer satisfaction.

• The customer base tends to be very loyal, and the provider has many very "high-clicking" customer accounts that ensure a steady stream of profitable after-sales revenue.

• Oce is very reliant on two geographies for the majority of its revenue stream. Eighty-four percent of shipment sales in 2009 were generated in Europe and North America.

• The Oce brand name doesn't enjoy the same brand status in the office environment as some of its competitors, or when compared with its production business.

• Up until the acquisition by Canon, Oce relied on a succession of OEM partners for lower-end office products. Access to Canon-manufactured devices will enhance and stabilize the entire Oce product portfolio.

• Account management is one of Oki's primary strengths. Oki's focused customer approach allows this provider to offer good services, support and maintenance to its client base, driven by vertical expertise, such as manufacturing, retail, finance and legal.

• Oki's line of printers and MFPs are easy to deploy and to operate, and they are ideal for small and distributed environments, such as branch locations.

• Despite being a much-smaller industry player, Oki's marketing messaging and Web content strategies are very effective and consistent across geographies.

• Oki does not have a complete product portfolio to satisfy the needs of centralized, high-volume print environments. While this provider can satisfy many branch and small-office printing needs, it lacks a more-robust page A3 MFP for high-volume print offerings, especially in monochrome, in which it has no products.

• While Oki has programmable MFPs, the platform is based on a closed and proprietary architecture that goes against the industry trend of open standards. With MFPs increasingly becoming more connected to document workflows, clients seeking this functionality may need to turn to other print providers.

• Oki's unit market share is very low in most geographies, even with its A4-centric product offering. This provider will face increasing competition from traditional printer providers, as well as from MFP providers that are increasing their A4 MFP product portfolios.

• Although Ricoh has multiple brands (for example, IKON and Lanier) that continue to consolidate, it enjoys strong customer satisfaction, through good account management and product rollouts.

• Ricoh has a very good geographic-balanced strategy, reflected in Ricoh's top unit market share position in the A3 MFP space in all the major geographies. This can be attributed to its extensive sales and distribution network.

• Ricoh's partnerships and alliance programs are one of the strongest in the industry, both with other hardware OEMs and with software providers. Ricoh invests a significant amount of resources for research and development, particularly concerning SMFP and related applications, to capitalize on the changing nature of print.

• Ricoh has a long and established environmental record, and it was recognized at the 2010 World Economic Forum as one of the companies with good sustainable business practices and products in the electronics business.

• Ricoh's acquisition strategy during the past several years has created an integration challenge, which this provider has somewhat overcome. In April 2010, Ricoh held its first dealer event that brought together all of its brands, exposing the still-challenging task of successfully integrating all of its dealers and brands under one company.

• Although Ricoh has one of the most complete product portfolios in the industry, this provider nonetheless lacks a significant presence in the page printer and page A4 MFP segments. This is evident in the relatively low unit market share that Ricoh holds in some key regions, including North America (ranked No. 8) and, to some extent, Western Europe (ranked No. 6).

• Samsung Electronics' strong presence in the consumer segment gives it the edge in industrial design, and it invests heavily in technology and product design.

• Samsung Electronics has taken the leader's position in page A4 MFP market, displacing longtime leader HP. Its unit market share grew from 26% in 2009 to 28% in 2010. Samsung is No. 2 in the page printer segment, with a market share of 15% in 2009.

• Samsung Electronics not only owns many of the technology and components in its printers and MFPs, such as semiconductors and printer engines, but also has strong alliances in place to strengthen its product lineup. Samsung Electronics supplies low-end engines on an OEM basis to Dell, Lexmark, Ricoh and Xerox.

• Although we continue to hear from dealers that Samsung Electronics is aggressively approaching them with its mostly A4 MFP product line, they state that Samsung Electronics needs a better A3 product family to meet the needs of customers. Samsung Electronics' planned introduction of A3 MFPs in South Korea toward the end of 2010 — and in the rest of the world in 2011 — should complement this provider's presence in the enterprise segment.

• Samsung Electronics relies primarily on its channel partners to sell products in the market. It doesn't have a significant direct sales presence, which is a drawback when it comes to selling and supporting large corporate accounts with multinational needs. Samsung Electronics still relies heavily on the traditional hardware and supply model, and it lacks a strong strategy for document management, software and services. Samsung Electronics' planned introduction in late 2010 of its SMFP platform will join other providers in this space.

• Samsung Electronics has shown some weakness in addressing end-user service issues.

• Sharp strongly invested in customer feedback and requirements for the development of its Frontier Series of A4 MFPs, being one of the first traditional copier providers to recognize the trends toward A4 in the industry.

• Sharp's SMFP platform, called the Open Systems Architecture (OSA), is a strong offering that can effectively compete in the market. On both its A3 and A4 platforms, Sharp's SMFP platforms offer a Web services architecture, with a simple and streamlined certification process for application deployments.

• Sharp tends to do well among smaller organizations, leveraging its strong dealer network.

• Sharp rarely comes up in Gartner customer inquiries and RFPs. Sharp is less-well-positioned among midsize to large enterprises and among worldwide organizations that seek providers with worldwide capabilities.

• Sharp has product gaps in printer and production segments. It must invest in these areas to present themselves with a complete product portfolio, for office and CRD printing needs.

• Although Sharp has strong SMFP offerings and its partners are the same as for many of its competitors, it no longer is alone in this space, and increasingly, it faces significant pressure from larger providers with strong SMFP technology and partner networks.

• Toshiba has a very strong dealer network worldwide. In the past few years, Toshiba has also invested in its two-tier distribution channel, which helps it with volume sales. In addition, Toshiba has a strong presence in key emerging markets, such as China, where it is the market leader in the A3 MFP market (18% in 2009).

• Toshiba has a strong sales strategy that is reflected in a good mix of small, midsize and large organizations.

• Toshiba has a strategic partnership with HP's Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) to distribute the entire product portfolio in North America.

• Toshiba has a strong environmental program. It has partnered with an imaging consumables company to create a "Zero Waste to Landfill" recycling program, which turns spent cartridges into useful plastic products (for example, eLumber used in park benches).

• Toshiba doesn't boast the most-comprehensive product line. It has gaps in printers and in light production devices and in its page A4 MFP portfolio. The partnerships that Toshiba has with HP and Lexmark in North America could help Toshiba if expanded into other regions.

• Although Toshiba does leverage its dealer channel, a stronger direct sales channel, similar to its North American business, in other regions could help Toshiba's efforts to increase its market share in these regions.

• Although Toshiba is having success in its North American channel training program, an expansion into other regions and further development of its dealer channel to better understand MFP solutions would serve to differentiate Toshiba from other MFP providers in the industry.

• Xerox continues its innovation on solid ink technology, SMFP, document management, and production printing. Xerox understands where the market is going and helps shape it, evident in its R&D investments that go well beyond hardware.

• Xerox has one of the strongest environmental track records in the industry. Xerox is a pioneer in the design and reuse of components into new hardware. It also has a very strong supplies recycling program, and with its solid ink technology, this provider can cut supplies packaging waste significantly.

• Xerox has a well-diversified geographic strategy, including being present in many key emerging markets for many decades, prior to many of its key competitors.

• Software integration with its SMFP platform (Extensible Interface Platform) continues to gain success among its customers and partners. Xerox does this by leveraging its expertise in document management and workflow software, as well as in hardware.

• In some cases, problem resolution related to help desk and technical support can be an issue for Xerox customers in large accounts.

• Some customer feedback also suggests account management issues, which can result in long response times, particularly for large and complex customers. Xerox continues to invest heavily in systems and processes to minimize such issues and to improve some customers' perception of indifference.