Canon India has forayed into the commercial photo printing business by introducing the new DreamLabo 5000 commercial inkjet printer equipment targeting the retail photo and album printing industry.
With this new launch, Canon India marks its entry into the commercial photo printing market, a new business domain for the company. Delivering a new standard of combined photo and text quality together with high productivity, the DreamLabo offers the production photo printing market a viable alternative to silver halide technology, which will revitalize the photo printing market in the country.
In addition, through opportunities possible from premium quality, it offers both the production photo and the small batch premium print-on-demand (POD) markets substantial new revenue opportunities. This launch makes India the first country in South Asia, after Japan and South Korea where the Dreamlabo 5000 machine is being installed.
Kazutada Kobayashi, President & CEO, Canon India, said, “Canon has always been at the forefront of bringing innovative products to customers. With this latest business entry, we are hoping to strengthen our ability to meet the printing needs of professional and wedding photographers.”
“With the DreamLabo 5000, we clearly want to establish innovation leadership in India. For us at Canon India, this is not just a new machine, but the technology that can revitalize the entire industry and open up substantial new business opportunities. Canon is setting a new benchmark for the production printing of high quality photos with this launch,” added Kobayashi.
Bangalore based GK Vale, a Canon India premium partner which operates 9 Canon Image Square stores in the city, is the first customer to purchase and install this in India.
Further on the announcement, Dr. Alok Bharadwaj, Executive Vice President, Canon India, said that India is a Rs.3000 crore photo printing industry with lion share coming from wedding albums and travel vacation photos.
While there is tremendous change in photo capturing, the printing art is still dominated with conventional technology. Conventional silver halide technology is just too old and digital alternative is not matching customer expectations. There was enormous scope of value creation in this space.
“Our partners call the new Dreamlabo 5000 prints as HD (high definition) prints. We plan to start with Rs.15 crore coming out of this domain in 2014. It has a potential to create a Rs100 crore business stream in 5 years,” said Dr.Bharadhwaj.
Further, “This launch has put India on a global map of Hi quality digital photo printing. To promote this business and to impact a larger ecosystem, Canon organized a meet comprising of photo labs,
wedding photographers, wedding planners and event agencies in Bangalore today, “ he added.
Leveraging and extending Canon’s existing inkjet technology, which it has successfully deployed through its PIXMA desktop printers range, the DreamLabo 5000 features a newly developed high-density print head, enabling over 300 mm wide printing output. Incorporating Canon’s FINE (Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering) technology, the print head enables the printing of high-quality photos and detailed text to support a variety of high-value-added output, from premium photo albums, photo books, photo calendars, photo collages and other merchandise to high-quality POD items, such as bespoke brochures.
The wide print head delivers high-speed One-Pass Printing, requiring only a single pass of the printing paper while the print head remains in a fixed position. When used in combination with the automatic double-sided printing function, the DreamLabo 5000 is capable of printing the contents of A4 size print approx.1,000 page and 4×6 single print approx. 2,300 page per hour.
The system also realizes high productivity by enabling paper and ink tank replacement during printing, supporting the extended operation times required for production printers.
DreamLabo 5000 uses a seven-colour dye-based ink system that delivers smooth gradation. The new printer enables the output of photo images with a level of colour representation comprehensively surpasses that of conventional silver halide. The retail cost of DreamLabo 5000 in India is around Rs4.5 crore. Canon will be working with its sales team and channel partners to reach out to the masses with this new area of business.
