Foxconn Buys 10% of Sharp Corp

Thoughts??? Nothing mentioned about copiers?

Sharp is a big company and its businesses operate pretty autonomously.

Plus its pretty common for panel makers to partner-up to share the costs and mutually benefit from the manufacturing scale.

If anything, its a testament to how much $ Foxconn is making.

We all know Sharps main focus is not office equipment, the question is will Sharp move further away from office equipment with the foxconn purchase. I'm thinking yes...others?

Has anyone seen the documentary special on TV covering the history of FoxConn....it was amazing to watch all the people acting like robots and elbow to elbow. Then they actually put up nets around the building because workers were jumping off the roof and committing suicide because of the harsh working conditions. It just like it is in the copier business. :-)

You can also find many videos online....watch them....it almost does not entice someone to buy an ipad.

I thought I hd heard of foxconn before, thanx for the memories. Poor people jumping off, thats a dam shame!

Apple are gearing up to make TV's this gives them access to panels and from what I understand Sharp have some great patents.

Wish they would do a Panasonic and pull out of the copier market, they are one of the main vendors driving price down in our part of the world (for SMB deals anyway)

Just maybe he next office copier from sharp will not only copy, print and scan but it may also be the office Stereo, the Office vacum cleaner, the office microwave and cash register all-in-one.

Art you forgot the office TV as well.

But they forgot the coffee maker.

SHARP is definitely moving away from Office Equipment and they will not be a player in the Industry very soon. You will see SHARP segregated in the 'Other' category on Market Share charts by 2014.

GMAN....why do you say this? What proof are you seeing to make such a call? I agree they will not be a player in a few years. Right now they have some nice boxes and a great price to move.

I talk to people. They also made comments that conflict your statement about "nice boxes." However, they are being sold cheap, so we can agree on the "great price to move" assessment. We are both in agreement that "they will not be a player" in the future, I simply believe it will happen quicker than you do.

Xerox buys ACS, KonicaMinolta buys AllCovered, Ricoh moves to new branding for Managed Services. It seems now more than ever the writing is on the Wall for Sharp, Toshiba, Muratec and the book is yet to be written for Kyocera in the copier business.

Art, what do you mean the writing is on the wall?

"Writing on the Wall" It's MY belief that there will only be four players left in the office equipment industry in the next 5 years. I also believe the times have changed and the next gen of office workers will print less, copy less and be more comfortable with cloud storage, email, cloud DMS and anything that will produce less paper.

I believe the manufacturers that make the move to Managed Services (also controlling the network) will be the players that will survive. As someone told me today, "it's much easier to get rid of your hardware/MFP provider than it is to get a new IT vendor". I agree with that statement. I just can't see Sharp, Toshiba or Muratec being able to gain marketshare or increase profitablity in the US. As far as Kyocera, a few months ago they made a name change, the see the future, my question is do they have the right dealer channel that can make the move to Managed Services.

Really! Take a look at the Sharp (the front page is TV's, then Displays, then MFP's and then Solar), and Toshiba (the front page is tablets, notebooks, LCD Displays) web site and you tell me what thier focus is. It's certaintley not MFP's, or printers.

We've already taken the steps for a deeper transition to to Managed Services, I've known about SaaS for a few years, however never knew about HaaS.

Time will tell if I'm right or wrong on this, but I'm betting I'm right.

Nice info Art....who are your top 5?

I believe these 5 have or will have made the transition and not in any order:

KonicaMinolta
Xerox (Rumors are swirling about Samsung buy-out, I doubt it though)
Ricoh
Canon (Since this OCE thingy is now completed, I think alot of time will be spent synergize the two different cultures, this may be as hard as or even more difficult than the Ricoh and Ikon cultures)
Kyocera (like I stated I'm not sure if they have the channel to pull it off in the US)

Art has cracked the code