Canon has appointed Midwich Thame as its sixth distributor in a bid to boost its poor laser printer sales. Midwich Thame gets distribution rights to all Canon's laser printers, personal copiers, scanners and fax machines - but it will no be distributing Canon's successful BubbleJet range. "For the next few months Canon want us to focus on developing the market for these products" said Midwich Thame prodocut manager Nick Culley "But we hope to get distribution rights for the BubbleJet in the future." Culley said that there was some overlap between the Canon laser printer and the Xerox range which Midwich Thame already distributes, but that there was room to grow the market for Canon. Canon is dwarfed in the laser printer market by HP. Figures from Romtec for indirect unit shipments in June give Canon just 2 per cent of the laser printer market, with HP at over 70 per cent. The majority of Canon's distributors focus on the BubbleJet product, which has been more successful. In June, Canon was third in the inkjet market with 28 per cent. Canon's other five disties are Micro P, ISI, C2000, CHS and Ingram. ®