Epson announced on Monday that they expect their printer shipments to decline by about 10% over the next year. The reduction is due to their decision to eliminate some of their “low-end” non-multifunction models. These models are less profitable for Epson, so they decided to focus on the more expensive and lucrative all-in-one printers. They also plan to save money by using more of the same parts in multiple machines.

Epson is currently the number two printer manufacturer in the world, trailing HP. According to the article, they currently have about a 20% share of the market compared to HP’s 35% share. Recently Epson has been losing ground in Europe to Canon and HP, and this decision to scale back their shipments will likely cause them to slip a little in the U.S. market as well.

Focusing more on high-end models would make Epson more similar to Canon, in that Canon does not have a huge number of models on the market and few of them are cheap entry level machines. They tend to limit their supply and focus on either photo or multifunction machines. These days, you won’t really find a simple “low-end” Canon inkjet printer that doesn’t really do anything but print, but you can find a couple from Epson like the Stylus C88 or the Stylus C66. HP has always been the leader in inexpensive entry level inkjets, and with Dell now in that market as well, it probably just doesn’t make much sense for Epson to be there too. As consumers get more serious about home printing, whether for photos or for their small businesses, there will probably be fewer and fewer of this type of machine and in the end Epson will not be missing out on much.

Seiko Epson Expects Inkjet Printer Shipments to Fall [Bloomberg]