Wonder what Canon is thinking right? Do you think that HP ever contacting Canon about acquiring their devices for their foray into enterprise MPS MFP's?
Just went you think you've seen it all, along comes a partnership where one provider has never been able conquer the MFP business here in the US, and the other had huge market share for copiers in the middle 80's, well until Ikon dumped them.
The question that I keep asking myself is what happens with Canon, will HP eventually make a shift to using all of Sharp's print engines in their devices?
I also think about how this will effect me and in particular many of our Print4Pay Hotel members that have light production and production equipment in our larger accounts. Before, we never had to worry about HP in the Production Environment, and now it seems that has changed.
For me it's all going to boil down to support, service and trust. I don't believe that the HP sales force will have the fortitude to place these units in direct & dealer accounts. Where's the experience and the knowledge going to come from to service, and support these units? Will the end user be able to have the courage to deal with HP and more importantly have the trust that they will be able to service/support the product in a timely manner?
I remember the Edgeline, however this marriage has a lot more pop than the Edgeline and I would not be writing about it if I did not have some concern about having another player in the MPS & MFP business, especially in the light production and production market.
Make no bones about it, Sharp & HP need to quantify their consumable business. But, I guess my last question of the day is what are some of the larger Sharp dealers thinking about this?
Lot's of questions....
-=Good Selling=-
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