Top Ten MFP Copier Industry Predictions for 2014

• The Big 4 Copier manufacturers (Ricoh, Xerox, KonicaMinolta and Canon) will start buying Document Management Software Companies to enhance their "be everything to everyone mentality".
• Just maybe this will be the year when one manufacturer finally calls it quits for manufacturing copiers and getting back to their core business. But, who will it be?  Toshiba, Sharp or Kyocera?
• The year of Acquisitions for Dealers:  Larger dealers will escalate their efforts to acquire smaller dealers in order to maintain and grow market share in their territories.
• Document Management software finally hits home for SMB accounts, more dealers will have the talk with their prospects and customers about managing their documents.
• Capture software will also be a huge theme for this year.  That next generation of dealer owners, sales managers and sales people understand that imaging systems will no longer pay the bills!
• Keywords for 2014 will be WORKFLOW, Business Process Management. SMB businesses need to do more with less.
• One of the Big 4 will buy a 3D printing manufacturer, to capture the consumable revenue stream that they had with imaging equipment.
• Memjet "waterfall" print head finally makes a splash in the MFP market place for SMB's.
• Some of the largest copier dealers will acquire VAR's to increase their MNS and BDR business.
• The rise of segment 5 A4 MFP's, there's a few on the market now, look for more manufacturers to have offerings in Segment 5.  Segment 6? O wouldn't bet against it.

Have fun with this, I did!