or several years now, the Indian peripherals market has stood on four legs: printer, photocopier, fax machine and scanner. The first three have been around for a long, long time while the scanner has been a relatively recent addition.

Over the last few years, a new multi-fangled creature has begun making its appearance in the Indian workplace: it prints, photocopies, scans and can receive and send faxes, and is called - rather unimaginatively - the multi-function device (MFD). Sales are booming and according to the IT research and consultancy firm, IDC, about a quarter million MFDs valued at Rs 463 crore were sold last year. Does this signal the beginning of the end for the standalone copier, printer, fax and scanner?... more