Scanner
Canon beats HP
Scanners have been introduced for the first time in the Channel Champions survey.
A splurge in digitization in the government sector, coupled with government regulations to introduce an electronic cheque truncation system, led to the growth of this segment. A large number of enterprises also invested in scanners to cut down on their paper and courier bills by going digital.
HP and Canon were the top players in the category, and dominated the market. Canon won the category by scoring higher than HP on all parameters except two—channel training and certification, and brand-pull and customer marketing. Epson failed to make the cut because it polled less than 10 percent votes.
Canon
Canon, with its increased focus on scanners, gained significant channel mind share particularly in class B and C cities. In class A cities too the company is slowly but steadily gaining mind share. Many large HP IPG partners said that while in 2009 they did some opportunistic business with Canon, they are now seriously considering whether to align more strongly with Canon as they are impressed with its channel engagement.
Canon has a portfolio of scanners that is larger than HP’s. In pricing, Canon products are almost 20-30 percent lower than HP’s, particularly in the entry and mid-range. High margins are also driving some HP partners toward Canon.
While HP seemed to be focused only on the government sector for its scanner business, Canon worked with partners to target several other verticals.
Since not many failures were reported in scanners, partners were happy with the product quality and support of Canon. Moreover, to avoid issues faced by HP with power adapters, Canon came out with a USB power cord with its entry-level models to draw power directly from the computer. Partners rated Canon’s channel policies as fair and transparent.
Hewlett-Packard
Respondents said that HP suffers in this category because it took its eye off the scanner market two years ago. They said that HP had forecast that multi-function printer (MFPs) would cannibalize the stand-alone scanner market, and hence they had stopped focusing on scanners. However, against HP’s expectations, the scanner market continued to grow strongly.
HP’s scanners are rated good in terms of performance, but are priced higher than the competition. While the price difference isn’t much in the high-end A3 scanners, HP charges a 30 percent premium for its entry-level and mid-range scanners which respondents said is not justified at all. Despite selling at a higher price, respondents complained that over the last year the company has cut down on the partner margins. Still, most HP partners continued their association with the company due to its brand-pull.
A few partners reported about the failure of the AC-to-DC power converters that came with HP scanners.
Many HP IPG partners said that HP is losing its personal touch in managing channel relations. They opined that if HP doesn’t get its channel policies and engagement right, it would lose further mind share and market share.
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