WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
8-5-07
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is legal for manufacturers to create a mandatory minimum selling price for their product. The case was decided regarding a store that sold women’s clothing, that ran afoul of the clothing manufacturer’s rules. Unknown if any copier manufacturers will adopt this policy.
- A group in Australia at Queensland University, is claiming that some laser printers generate toner that is hazardous to your health. It claims that 17 of the 62 it tested are “high particle emitters”, and that breathing in the toner might be as bad as inhaling cigarette smoke. Models named as polluters including some Hewlett Packard models. (no Konica Minolta products apparently named, but one wonders if this study was funded in any way by inkjet printer manufacturers) Models mentioned as “high emitters” are:
o HP Color LaserJet 4650dn (made by Canon)
o HP Color LaserJet 5550dtn (made by Canon)
o HP Color LaserJet 8550n (made by Canon)
o HP b/w LaserJets 1320n, 2420n, 4200dtn, 4250n, 8000dn & 8150n (made by Canon)
- Hewlett Packard announced it has sold 15 Indigo production color devices to CeWe Color Holding of Oldenburg, Germany, which prints over 1,000,000 million photo books per year.
- More info on the “Imaging & Printing Group” of Hewlett Packard, which markets all inkjet and laser printers and MFPs:
o Revenue for this division of $27.2 billion per year (total company is $94.1 billion per year)(in contrast, Xerox is $15.9 billion, and Canon at $35 billion)
o Has 15,000 DesignJet wide format color inkjet printers installed in Europe alone, using bubblejet technology (in contrast, Xerox sells relabeled wide format product from Mutoh of Japan)
o Now over 4,000 Indigo systems in operation worldwide
- More details on the new Hewlett Packard Indigo 5500 production color system:
o Up to 7 colors on-line
o Top speed of 68ppm full color, or 272ppm b/w
o Up to 1200dpi with interpolation
o Up to 330mm x 483mm paper size handling
o Up to 350gsm coated, or 320gsm uncoated sheet maximum paper weight handling
o Can be printing with 6 of the 7 colors, while the seventh is being cleaned and changed.
o Maximum duty cycle of 1.5 million color pages per month.
o Recycling so that left over oil is separated from water for reuse.
o Optional heater to prevent press from cooling down when not running
o Optional UV coater for high gloss output
- Hewlett Packard reported it sold an Indigo 4500 to Multi-Color Corp., a print shop in Green Bay, WI. It also placed an Indigo 5000 at Copy Craft Printers of Lubbock, TX.
- Hewlett Packard named Tereck Office Solutions of Durham, NC as a “VIP” dealer, for their success selling Hewlett Packard MFPs, including the Edgeline color inkjet models. Owner is Edward Ecker.
- Xerox announced it has sold a Nuvera 288 to Formpro Mail Marketing of England. (This unit is actually two 144ppm b/w production engines bolted together for 288ppm output) It also sold two iGen3 color systems to Lewis Creative Technologies, a printshop in Richmond, VA that hopes to produce 1,000,000 VDP color pieces per month.
- Xerox claims to have installed over 11,000 production b/w systems since 2004. It predicts that by 2010, it will have 12% of all color systems. The company also claims:
o 120 billion pages printed per year are transactional/promo pieces (credit card statements, etc.)
o 68 billion pages printed per year are for direct mail (with 7 billion increase per year)
o Variable data produces 23 billion pages per year (growing at 22% per year)
- Xerox is working on a possible replacement for the iGen3 that will use “cold fusion” technology, to reduce the amount of heat generated that is normally required to melt the toner to the paper, according to Val Govaerts, VP of production for Xerox Europe.
- Sharp was forced to pay an undisclosed amount of money to settle a lawsuit with Xerox. Xerox filed suit in U.S. District Court of Texas, claiming that Sharp infringed on nine Xerox patents covering:
o scanning
o chargers for print cartridges
o pre-programed dialing for fax features
o document handling systems
- Xerox announced a new copier paper that will appear to businesses who are concerned about the environment. Xerox claims:
o new product is called “High Yield Business Paper”
o uses 90% of the tree, versus 45% using traditional methods (however, trees are a renewable resource)
o less curling and dust than some papers
o requires less water and chemicals during manufacturing as compared to traditional process
o 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emission from paper mill
o Paper is 17.7 lb. bond, as compared to normal 20lb. or 28lb. bond, but called “45lb. text” by Xerox
o Recommended for use for printing invoices and statements
o 84 brightness level (measure of whiteness)
o Unknown who the actual maker of this paper is
o (Due to the thin-ness of the paper, and is low “white-ness”, the success of this product is unknown)
- Xerox has convinced some Alphagraphics print for pay locations to also be sales agents for Xerox desktop color printers and MFPs. Some locations are running “Free Color Printer” promotions, where end users sign a contract to get a free Phaser color wax printer if they commit to buying supplies for 3,000 color pages per month for 3 years. (advertised as 23 cents per paged based on 5% coverage per page per color)
- For upcoming Xerox trade shows, the company has hired “Bill Nye the Science Guy” to conduct demonstrations of Xerox color technology.
- Xerox now shipping in the U.S., the DocuColor 8000AP. Remember that this device is advertised as offering 80ppm top speed full color on ANY paper stock. This is misleading in that if you choose the 80ppm “All Weights” mode, the print quality will be inferior. In order to product high quality color, the customer must choose the “Single Weight” mode, which slows down the engine considerably (just like other production color devices). Base MSRP is $300,000.00.
- Epson apparently is planning on introducing a new, high end, color inkjet wide format printer with faster speeds.
- EFI reported its last quarter’s financials:
o Record revenue of $162.5 million
o profit dropped 52% (due to huge expense of recent large “Connect” tradeshow in Las Vegas)
o is currently working on restatement of past financials due to accounting problems
- EFI also endorsed the new 3.2 version of DirectSmile variable data software for full color direct mail production. It uses the PPML format, which is standard on most external EFI Fiery print servers, allowing VDP jobs to run at engine speed (most embedded controllers do NOT support PPML)
- According to Larry Magid of CBS, inkjet printer ink costs up to $13,629.91 a gallon, making it the most expensive liquid on the planet.
- Lexmark announced changes in upper management:
o Paul Rooke, formerly in charge of laser division, now in charge of consumer inkjet division, and received 25,000 stock options as a reward for the move
o Eamon Ryan, formerly in charge of Europe, Middle East and Africa, has retired, and replaced by Najib Bahous, formerly in charge of consumer inkjet printer division
o Marty Canning hired as leader of laser printer division, formerly of DANKA. He will earn a base salary of $450,000 per year, and 25,000 stock options.
- InfoTrends predict this about sales of scanning devices by year 2011:
o 14% annual growth rate from now until 2011
o 81% will be workgroup models
o Most popular feature is distributed scanning of documents within company
- Kyocera won the “Printer Manufacturer of the Year” award from Marketing Research Consultants, Inc. (Canatta Report). This is based on feedback from independent copier dealers.
- Fujitsu introduced a new scanner for busy network environments, the FI-6000NS offering:
o automatic image quality adjustment/color detection/image deskewing
o automatic blank page detection and removal
o large touch screen LCD display control panel
o built-in 101 keyboard (for easy to enter e-mail addresses and subject lines)
o 50 original capacity document feeder
o Scans color or b/w
o 150 to 600dpi resolution choices
o 8 bits per channel color scanning
o Top speed of 25opm
o Ultrasonic double feed or original detection and prevention
o Scan to email/PDF/network folders/LDAP
o Minimum scan size of 2.1”x2.9” (ID card handling)
o Maximum scan size of legal (8.5”x14”)
o Comes with ABBY FineReader OCR software
- After buckling under pressure from independent print shops across the U.S., Adobe agreed to remove the Fedex Kinkos logo from Adobe Acrobat Reader software.
- Ricoh introduced two new wide format, b/w laser MFPs, the Aficio MPW2400 and MP W3600 offering:
o Will be also sold under the Lanier and Savin names
o 600x600dpi
o 120 second warmup time
o 34 second first copy out time
o Can stamp documents with dates, page numbers
o Two print controller options:
§ Embedded:
· HP GL, RTL, TIFF CALS or PDF printing
· 600x600dpi scanning
· Up to 400KB scan size for scan to e-mail
· Up to 2000MB scan size for scan to folder
· Scan to e-mail/TWAIN/SMB/URL/NCP
· Scan to TIFF, PDF or JPEG
§ External RW-3600 print controller
· Must be loaded onto PC supplied by end user
· Drag and drop
· Instant full view of images for editing or merging
· Runs on Microsoft Windows 2000 OS
o MP W2400 offers:
§ 4cpm top speed or 2.36ips for D size print
§ 24” wide maximum paper width handling
§ 590” long maximum print length
§ Comes standard with one paper roll holder, can add second paper roll holder as option
§ 80GB hard drive
§ 1GB RAM
§ Base MSRP of $15,000.00
o MP W3600 offers:
§ 6cpm top speed or 3.14ips
§ 36” wide maximum paper width handling
§ 590” long maximum print length
§ Comes standard with one paper roll holder, can add second paper roll holder as option
§ 80GB hard drive
§ 1GB RAM
§ Base MSRP of $22,000.00
- As a promotion to encourage end users to lease a copier through a Toshiba branch, they are offered a free copy of Re-Rite, which is an entry level scan/retrieval software application.
- Toshiba announced it has hired The Gallup Organization to implement best practices in its factory direct branches, called “HumanSigma”.
- Toshiba announced that its branches will resell FMAudit print management software and hardware.
- Oce’ announced that its VarioPrint 6250, which produces up to 250ipm per minute b/w, has won a “2007 InterTech Technology Award” from PIA/GATF.
- Oce’ won a bid to supply VarioStream 7450 rollfed production b/w systems to Cenveo, which is a print for pay business with 28 locations in the U.S., including Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Canada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.
- Kodak announced it will allow a chain of paper stores to sell the Kodak NexPress production color systems, by authorizing SPICERS Corp. and Coast Paper.
- Kodak reported its last quarters financials:
o $121 million improvement year over year pretax revenue
o Second quarter loss of $173 million (due to restructuring costs)
o $44 million earnings from Graphic Communications Group (GCG which markets production NexPress and Digimaster engines)
o $929 million total sales from GCG, up 2%
- Kodak announced it is shutting down its website that was supposed to attract end users to funnel print jobs to print shops in the U.S. that owned Kodak NexPress production color systems. The site was creative.Kodak.com, and called the “The Creative Network”.
- SMART Papers has decided sponsor race car driver, Leilani Munter as part of the Sam Schmidt Indy Car Motorsports Team. If you recall, Ms. Munter’s original sponsor was Konica Minolta.
- OfficeMax agreed to partner with VistaPrint. This means that in-store customers can walk up to the OfficeMax copy centers, called “ImPress”, and go on-line with VistaPrint to design full color variable data jobs, which will be output on machines in the store.
- Canon announced that DANKA has agreed to market the new imagePRESS C7000VP production color systems, with models showing up in selected DANKA showrooms in next 30 days.
- Kubichek Office Products Group, a Konica Minolta dealer, has been sold to an Illinois based copier dealer called Impact Networking. Impact Networking is a Kyocera and Sharp copier dealer.