OKI Data introduces MFPs with the industry’s first seven-year warranty.
In February 2019, OKI Data introduced three models in the COREFIDO EX series MFPs for the Japanese domestic market with an industry first seven-year warranty and seven-year free maintenance items. Maintenance items under the seven-year warranty include the fuser unit, belt unit, and paper-feed roller set. OKI Data provides replacement items free of charge when they reach the end of their respective lives. The items are replaced by the users themselves. This is an extension of the five-year warranty, another industry first, which OKI Data introduced on its COREFIDO MFPs in 2008.
The reason for OKI Data’s decision to extend the warranty on the new models is to gain a competitive advantage by differentiating it from other companies. The original five-year warranty was favorably received by OKI Data customers, as evidenced by an extremely high satisfaction rate of 95% for the models with the five-year warranty.
Providing a long-term warranty is a risk to OEMs, but OKI Data said it can offer a seven-year warranty by increasing the print-duty cycle from 600,000 pages on its current machines with the five-year warranty to one million pages on the new products. While the current products with a five-year warranty are mainly targeted at offices, the new models will also target industrial markets where market expansion is expected in the future. These devices can print on special media such as waterproof paper and medicine bags.
As strategic products for both office and industrial markets, OKI Data is aiming for a 15% market share in the A3 color printer market in Japan, the equivalent of 100,000 to 110,000 unit sales annually. In the printer industry, the average MFP/printer warranty is from six months to one year. Because a longer warranty would be a heavy burden on OEMs, each OEM charges for maintenance. When OKI Data launched the five-year warranty in 2008, the decision was based on the LED printing method used in those machines. This reportedly causes fewer failures and the design of the machine allowed users to easily exchange components such as cartridges for consumables, along with the condition that users registered their organizations and continued to use genuine consumables provided by OKI Data. Since 2011, the company has also provided the service to which “five-year free parts maintenance” is added.
The newly developed fuser for the new products adopts low-melting-point toner to enhance quickness and energy saving performance, and reduces the number of parts to increase the robustness, according to OKI. In addition, the new products can accommodate waterproof paper as the result of redesigning the photoreceptor and transfer voltage of the image drum.
Speaking to the results of the company’s user survey, Junichiro Azuma, director and general manager of OKI Data’s domestic sales division, emphasized the 95% customer satisfaction rate, while also pointing out that five years after the original purchase, 95% of customers reported they were still using an OKI device or would buy and OKI device again. Many customers also requested a longer-term warranty.
According to the company’s research, 78% of the COREFIDO users with the five-year warranty said they would use the printer until it is broken, while 52% of respondents said they wanted to use the printers for more than six years. Fully 38% said they wanted to use the printers for more than five years.
Azuma also reported that bids that include six to seven years of free maintenance have already been submitted in vertical markets such as municipalities, education, and healthcare. OKI Data’s plan is to market these new MFPs through various sales channels in Japan, including mass merchandise stores (30%), e-commerce (30%), and office stores (40%).
“Our company has developed the new products aiming for the world’s best-selling A3 color printers by brushing up the current products that have 20% market share worldwide [A3 color with 44 ppm or less print speed, including the rebranded products],” concluded Akio Uchibayashi, general manager, product planning department of OKI Data’s products business division.
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