Alternatives: Printers

Nobody disputes Hewlett-Packard's position as the printer market leader, but alternative vendors are legion. There's Lexmark, Canon, Epson and Brother--and that's only one-tenth of the names that came up in the VARBusiness Alternatives Survey.

"You're not going to beat HP," says Eric Nordby, a director of sales at Brother. "Once you acknowledge that HP is untouchable and take it out of the picture, Lexmark is the vendor to beat."

Others positioning themselves as viable alternatives to HP and Lexmark are Konica/Minolta, Okidata, Samsung, Xerox and even Dell (although most of Dell's printers are supplied by other vendors).

Brother has clearly earned its place on the list of contenders, having built its channel base to 280 partners from 150 in the past six months. Nordby says the goal for year's end is 400, "but 500 is certainly within reach."

Of course, partner programs make up only part of the picture for vendors aiming to win market share. Product quality is equally important.

While Brother recently unveiled its highest-end MFP to date, the MFC-942OCN, Samsung launched a frontal assault against competitors at last month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with its new CLP 600, a networked color laser printer that generates 21 pages per minute in both monochrome and color.

While Samsung lacks the product breadth of its rivals, the company's success in other markets signals its readiness to step up to the plate in the printer arena as well.

"We're definitely looking to expand our penetration into the SMB market," says Mark Meisberger, senior marketing manager for Samsung's office automation group. "Our feedback from the reseller community is that they're looking for an alternative to HP and Lexmark, and we'd like to be that alternative."