It’s in the details: Epson Singapore celebrates 35 years

“Epson takes a unique approach to innovation and business, and is backed by a long history of artisanship and attention to the details. We are moving to expand our focus and deepen our efforts to serve the high growth potential markets in a range of business segments,” said said Tanaka Toshimitsu, managing director (SE Asia), Epson Singapore at the opening of the celebration of the 35th anniversary of Epson in Singapore, recently. “We aim to continue to bring innovations to our business customers that will deliver on precision and performance, and to push the boundaries of imagination and possibility.”

At the well-attended event Epson Singapore announced its commitment to the business and office segments as it moves to strengthen its product offerings for enterprise and corporate customers in the business to business (B2B) space. As the company continues to evolve to focus on the needs of businesses, it has seen positive growth, reflected in its business growth of 11.3 percent CAGR from FY15 to FY17 in SE Asia, and it expects this strong growth to continue.

“We expect our strong growth in the region to continue,” he added. “We aim to meet the different needs of our customers from business to large enterprises.” 

Epson hopes to continue to leverage its core technologies by drawing on its manufacturing expertise to create new innovations in its key areas of inkjet, visual communications, wearables and robotics that will bring new value to its customers through precision and smart technologies that will reduce the impact on our environment.

Tanaka in his presentation shared that Epson continues to hold the dominant market leadership position for projectors as the top projector brand, at 37.3% in Southeast Asia as of FY17Q1 according to Futuresource. Through expanding its high brightness laser projector line-up, Epson aims to meet the needs of the different business segments across corporate, government and education sectors.

Inkjet Rules

Through its innovation in its Micro Piezo printhead technology, Epson aims to meet the needs for the different office segments from small businesses to large enterprises and to replace laser printers with inkjet. Tanake added that Epson is currently one of the leaders of the inkjet printer market with 32 percent share in SE Asia.

The recent launch of the WorkForce Enterprise series, the WF-C20590, brought high-speed, high-productivity printers that deliver outstanding quality inkjet printing to enterprises, while helping companies lower total cost of ownership. Built with Epson’s PrecisionCore linehead technology, the printers print at breakthrough printing speeds of up to 100 pages per minute (ppm), one of the fastest speeds in inkjet printing, reinventing business printing in the office while rivalling laser printers in quality, durability, serviceability and cost.

In professional printing, Epson hopes to continue to drive the shift from analogue to digital textile printing for the large format printers to meet the growing demand. In the digital textile printing industry, Smithers Pira forecasts 17.5 percent annual growth for digital textile print, with a revenue growth forecast at an annual average of 12.3 percent for 2016 to 2021. 

Epson continues to drive innovation in the commercial and industrial printer markets for photo graphics, signage, textile and label printing amongst printing providers, retail stores and the like, and is expanding throughout the Southeast Asia region.

Enter The Robots

It is always interesting to see just how much of the work robots can do. And, at the Epson Roadshow we were informed that the Epson does not plan to develop robots that will replace humans, rather it aims to develop robots to do the jobs that are repetitive so that humans can be developed for the higher thinking jobs.

It is with this in mind that Epson envisions developing robots to see, sense, think and work like humans, as they work alongside and supporting humans in a variety of situations.

Thus the launch of the new T3 series robots has expanded Epson’s comprehensive line up of SCARA robots and offers a low total cost of ownership with 30 percent less power usage than conventional SCARA robots. The compact and versatile entry-level model is ideal for simple pick-and-place applications such as assembly, inspection and feeding tasks. It comes with the option to combine with Epson’s Vision Systems that can enable the robots to ‘see’, with powerful image processing systems that detect and position objects reliably.

Epson is a global leader in high-precision SCARA robots, which are deployed, in the manufacturing industry for a wide variety of applications.

Epson celebrated its 35th anniversary by revealing product showcase and sharing its latest innovations in inkjet printing, visual communications and industrial robotics on 31 Oct 2017 at Capella Singapore. Showcased for the first time in the region are the Moverio smart glasses BT-350 and BT-2200, alongside other key products including the T3 industrial robot, a digital textile printer and other innovations.

“Our vision is to create a new connected age of people, things and information with efficient, compact and precision technologies,” Tanaka added. “And to become an indesipensible company for our customers and society in general. We plan to expand for the next 35 years and beyond.”

“With the increasing digitalization there are lots of software and digital connects but between the software the human emotion there has to be an interface and that interface is always going to be hardware — which is Epson’s strength,” said Minoru Usui, president of Seiko Epson Corporation. “There will always be a need to create the hardware that will bridge the space between cyberspace and humans and this is where Epson will always be a force to reckon with.”