Slow and steady – will Canon win the race?

Will 2012 see a battle of the large format printer manufacturers for dominance? Has Canon the strength to dent the American giants stride or will their Oce purchase move HP into another dimension?

In the early days of large format printers, commandeering the CAD plotter to get a glossy, slightly grainy, graphic was every marketing departments dream. Manufactures started to sell the plotter in different ways. HP decided their DesignJet could do just about everything, introducing the revolutionary HP2500 which they sold into Retail, Copy Shops, Photography, Marketing. It was a one stop printing shop on wheels and so large at 36” wide. Epson responded with beautiful quality and piezo technology. Mutoh, Mimaki, Encad all came and took a chunk of the large format printer market. Manufacturers clambered for space behind the giant HP. And just when we all thought the space was filled along came the Japanese muscle of Canon with their first wide format printers offering. They came sensibly and slowly, dipping a well-researched toe into a well-established market. For a long time the others didn’t take a lot of notice of the Canon offering, it wasn’t a real competitor or was it?

Canon always at the forefront of technology tested the waters with products which did little more than create a channel, but by the time the second generation Image PROGRAF products arrived, the competitions were beginning to feel the sumo force behind the research and development which had always been Canon’s brilliance. Canon large format printer products are so well developed; they deliver speed and quality the others find it difficult to match, yet still they fail to dominate the market in the way HP have done. Canon inspires customer loyalty with their quality products and with so many photographers Canon specific it shouldn’t really be surprising to find these customers looking towards the same brand for their printing. Canon has taken a giant step forward towards the one area that has previously eluded them – CAD. With Canon’s purchase of Oce last year, is the tide now able to be turned? Yet HP has never lost foothold in the CAD sector despite others best attempts. 2012 will prove to be an interesting year for those who reside in the Digital wide format arena.

Will it be the Turtle or the Hare?

To receive a sample from any of the Canon large format ImagePROGRAF printers visit the UK sample web site Sampleprint.co.uk. A range of A2 samples are available all from renown UK based photographers who use Canon input and Canon output. The images shown on the site are all from the working portfolio of the photographers and are not designed simply as printer samples but are from real working applications.