Epson is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of computer printers and imaging-related equipment. Jason McMillan, Sales Director – Middle East, Epson speaks about its technology and environmentally conscious approach in face-to-face interaction with The Integrator.

How do you evaluate the changing trends in the professional world and how does Epson plan to orient itself to address the ever-increasing market needs?

Products and solutions that facilitate remote work, devise digital transformation, and promote sustainability are getting desirable attention these days. Epson is fully equipped with adequate technologies and solutions to address it all!

When it comes to evaluating the changing trends, we realize that enterprises are massively switching their reliance from legacy technologies to the latest technologies that facilitate hybrid work.

Inkjet heat-free technology for printers is Epson’s great leap towards sustainability as we understand there is no getting away from the fact that we’re facing a global climate crisis. It is important to turn down the heat and move towards low power consumption.

With inkjet technology in printing, we avoid two levels of heating – preheating the fuser, and using heat to fuse the toner to the paper – and reduce complexity in the printing process.

Alongside achieving sustainability goals, these devices offer huge flexibility in usage. Equally, they reduce the overall cost of printing with far less waste and far lesser user intervention. These features can make a huge impact on the daily running of small and medium-scale businesses as you are

Speak about the latest projection technology Epson brings out to the market

For enhanced learning and collaborative work, Epson comes up with pen-interactive and interactive finger-touch projector technologies. Multiple users can involve in the dual-pen annotation that these projectors offer and one of them supports finger touch besides dual-pen. With large displays and cutting-edge projection technologies, our projection devices cater to the needs of businesses as well.

What types of enterprises or verticals are your target and how do you handle the competition?

We have printing devices for all segments, from consumer home devices to enterprise products. Most of the enterprise solutions we come up with would suit almost every segment of the market – same with professional AV devices (i.e., projectors, projection mapping, and display devices).

In this region, we have nearly 70-75 percent of the market share in the education sector. Although industrial projection had taken a major hit by the pandemic, we still lead as projection solutions providers. Most pavilions at Expo 2020 in Dubai use Epson’s projection mapping technology that showcases market strength and keeps us far ahead of our competitors.

Speaking about competition in the printing segment, some of the printer manufacturers are our competitors for many years and we welcome fair competition. The difference between us and all of the other vendors at the moment is that we release only inkjet printers. In the Middle East and many other parts of the world, we don’t bring any laser-based technology any longer. Similarly, our competitors still find it hard to match with the Micro Piezo printhead technology we use.

Why do you strongly advocate a sustainability business model? 

Well, it can’t be ignored any longer!

Unless things change, we are soon going to see some drastic changes to our planet’s ecosystems. One of the things we can change is how we consume energy. Burning fossil fuels to create electricity produces vast amounts of CO2. As a company and individuals, we need to act to save energy and start using renewable energy sources. Making a sustainable choice is now essential, not optional.