One of these printers, Stylus Color 740 has the smallest ink droplet and with the printer's intelligent driver spcifying the correct size of drop, it gives the best colour photo reproduction. The printer, ideal for advertising, prepublication, corporates and architects, has been priced at Rs 17,000.

Epson Photo 700, another printer in the series, is priced at Rs 19,000 and prints in six colours at 1440 dots per inch (DPI). It can print photographs from digital image files.

Epson is launching what it calls the most affordable printer, Epson Syylus Color 640 and is priced at Rs 12,900. This allows even small- and medium-sized companies to be able to affort the 1440 DPI colour inkjet printer quality.

For entry-level users, Epson has come out with Epson Sylus Color 440 with 720 DPI photo quality colour. Priced at Rs 7,900 it can print 3,300 pages per black cartridge in aspecially designed economy mode. It comes with an extra colour cartridge.

On the printer markets, Epson general manager India operations T Yakuwa said the global inkjet market was expected to be 54 million units and expand to 60 million in 1999-2000. Epson's global share in the printer markets is 27 per cent, which would grow to 30 per cent in next fiscal.

On the advantages of these printers, Paresh Vora of Epson India said the key component in photoquality inkjet printers is the patented Micro Piezo head.

Epson offers a full range of printers, from dot-matrix to colour ink jets in India.