BEIJING--July 26, 2006-- Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. and OKI Printing Solutions, a subsidiary of Oki Electric have expanded their Asian operations with the launch of a sales office in Beijing. The new office, Oki Trading (Beijing) Co., Ltd., has already begun operations to meet growing demand in the printer market, and has been earmarked to provide a wider range of Oki products in the future. The Oki Group currently has nine subsidiaries in China as part of its strategy to provide local-oriented business; and with the inception of Oki Trading (Beijing) expects to achieve 20 billion yen sales by the fiscal year ending March 2009. Harushige Sugimoto, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Oki Electric says, "China is currently a key focus of the Oki Group, not only as a potential market, but also as a production, development and sales site. As a first step, we hope this new sales office will strengthen our printer sales in China, but beyond that, we intend to expand our product range to include various Oki products such as info-telecom products and semiconductors." Mikihiko Maeno, President and CEO for Oki Data Corporation said: "OKI Printing Solutions is one of the few truly global printing companies - represented in 120 markets throughout the world. That said, we are committed to providing a regional presence so that our resellers and customers benefit from the kind of knowledge and support that only a local team can offer. For this reason, we have expanded our Asian presence in the last year to now include offices in, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia." This expansion strategy is not unique to Asia, with Latin America also receiving additional support in the last few months with a print centre in Mexico and regional representative offices in Brazil. Oki hopes to hold a 10% share in China's color page printer market and a 30% share in the Serial Impact Dot Matrix (SIDM) market by the fiscal year ending March 2008 - with the latter an offshoot of the 70% market growth expected in China's SIDM market by 2009 due to the new tax system which has just been implemented in Beijing.