The fax of office life

FACSIMILE machines and photocopiers are by now standard equipment for even the smallest office, and have become more affordable and sophisticated as manufacturers vied for sales. Scanners and printers have been added to the shopping list of quite a number of firms again a function of falling prices and increased capability - and the future is likely, to see an increased trend toward the integration of all these functions into a single, compact cabinet.

Canon is widely regarded as a major player in the fax/copier sector. In 1995, the latest year for which data are available, the company in Ireland garnered a 23 per cent share of the fax market.

The company's managing director, Joe Cunniam, reckons there is still a place for the analog fax, but the majority of sales now are dedicated to the digitally based plain paper facsimile machines.

Many of these machines can double up as fax and printer, thus saving on space and cost, although higher outputs will require a stand alone printer. Prices range from as low as £300 for an analog model using treated paper, up to £2,500 for high specification plain paper machines.

In the copier sector, Canon Ireland claims 25 per cent of all monochrome sales and 55 per cent of colour models, with Xerox and Sharp taking the next two places with about 15 per cent each.

Prices for black and white start at about £1,000 for low volume machines designed for less than 1,000 copies per month, and rise to £35,000 for a model that can produce 100 copies per minute.

In the colour market, prices start at around £5,000, but £7,000 might be more typical, and range to over £50,000 for the type of specification required by copy bureaux. Canon Ireland, for instance, has just launched a new model, the CLC1000, that can turn out 31 copies every 60 seconds - a production rate Cunniam describes as "phenomenal".

There is a substantial and growing market for colour copiers, he says. Quite apart from the copy bureaux springing up around the country, there is a demand being created by the use of colour printers within companies: the colour copier is an effective way of dramatically increasing the output capacity of the slower printer. It is also significantly cheaper.

Prices have dipped from around £20,000 for the first such machines marketed in Ireland, to around £5,000 at present, but this trend of falling prices is unlikely to proceed much further, says Cunniam. Instead, it is likely that copiers will mimic the PC market, where manufacturers have taken to packing more into the same price range rather than reducing the price of an unchanging product.

The next trend in this area of office machinery, he suggests, is the integration of a number of different functions into a single, compact unit. Multi functionality has evolved to a stage where copier, scanner, printer, and fax are presented as one, with networking as an option. Prices for these units start at £5,000, rising to £15,000, depending on the various interface and soft ware capabilities required.