Xerox embarks on aggressive office strategy

The new market strategy, which Xerox Middle East announced today, offers an enhanced line of products with several new offerings to reach both large and small customers. These products will be showcased at this year's Gitex and the parallel Xerox Extreme Event, Xerox is showcasing the new range. All Xerox digital copiers and office multifunction systems now belong to one of the three families - CopyCentreTM, WorkCentre® or WorkCentre® Pro.

'Over the past two years we have revamped every aspect of our office business - from manufacturing to distribution - to develop a leaner, more cost-effective and efficient business model. With our strengthened operations, we now can be more competitive in the office and deliver substantial value to customers in more market segments,' said, Roy Harding, Vice-President and General Manager, Xerox Distributor Operations, Middle East and Africa.

'The office market is our key domain area, and globally we have invested more than $1.9 billion in research and development for office platforms over the past five years globally,' he added. 'We will leverage that investment, and the new offerings resulting from it, to fuel growth for Xerox and our customers in the Middle East.'

In the Middle East, the new and enhanced range includes a suite of 21 office products - including nine new digital copiers, an affordable choice for customers who want fast, reliable digital copying the CopyCentre's, basic multifunction products that print and copy, the WorkCentre's and advanced (Multi Function Products) MFPs that print, copy, fax, scan and e-mail, the WorkCentre Pro's. The new upgradeable line of office products has speeds ranging from 15 to 90 pages per minute (ppm). Until today, Xerox served the market with fully featured Multi-function Systems. As part of the new strategy, the expanded line of products now offers new choices, new values and new alternatives to businesses of every size. Recognising the need for colour in the office, the new range includes stand-alone colour copiers, as well as advanced multi-function colour devices, for both the office and the graphic arts environments. Rounding out Xerox's office product family are the new and existing Phaser printers, including solid ink colour imaging technology which maximizes speed and image quality. Bridging the gap between personal and black-and-white printing is a new model which features a print speed of 24ppm. The new Xerox Phaser colour printer, the fastest colour printer in its class prints colour and black-and-white at 24ppm.

'The impact of the technological breakthroughs in colour cannot be overstated,' added Roy Harding. 'Xerox is committed to providing the technology to produce colour documents in an increasingly easy and fast way, without a compromise on quality. Colour output capability in the office is fast becoming a necessity, and our product portfolio including the WorkCentre 3535, WorkCentre Pro 32 & 40 and the WorCentre M24 are colour enabled devices that address this need'. Xerox's colour range includes devices that can produce production quality colour documents in-house.

Xerox is a one-stop provider for all office product and services needs, from stand-alone digital copiers and printers to top-of-the-line, networked multifunction systems in black-and-white and color. Features previously bundled with higher priced products are now available in new entry-level configurations so that customers can purchase only what they need.

'These market initiatives coupled with leading-technology products priced competitively and available broadly assure continued service to both our large and small customers thereby indicating a positive growth rate for Xerox,' concluded Roy Harding.