RICOH SHINES IN THE BIG APPLE
By Lou Slawetsky
With New York City on a high security alert, Ricoh invited a select group of analysts to come see their state of the art Techno-logy Portal as well as some new digital imaging devices. Right in the heart of Times Square, Ricoh’s newly redesigned product show-case will surely impress potential customers as will their refreshed portfolio.
Products introduced at this meeting included the Aficio CL7000, heir apparent to the highly successful Aficio 3800. This fast color MFP prints at 28 (color)/38 (black) pages per minute (PPM) can print onto paper sizes as large as 12" x 49", offers online finishing into a large 2,500 sheet tray and prints at up to 1200 dpi. This device will be available in April 2003 and appears to be the flagship product of the expanding Aficio office color line of products. The Aficio CL5000 color laser printer, which prints at 10-PPM color and 36-PPM black, is now available. Finally, the Aficio CL3000 color laser printer prints 16.9 PPM color and 21 PPM black while offering customers advanced features such as 1200 dpi, finishing and optional IEEE 802.11b Wireless LAN and Bluetooth. Like CL7000 and CL5000, Ricoh claims the CL3000 will have an extremely aggressive cost per copy of under $.10/page for color and $.013/ page for black.
At the other extreme from the low-end color market are the high volume monochrome digital devices. Ricoh is raising the bar in this segment with the 90-PPM Aficio 2090 and 105-PPM Aficio 2105. These devices build on the success of the Aficio 1085 and 1105 with the addition of scanning capability. This allows these devices to fit into Ricoh’s docu-ment management strategy by supporting products such as GlobalScan and ScanRouter. The new Aficio devices offer 100-sheet stapling, a Document Server, and Scan-to-email/file capability. The most impressive area of the device is finishing where customers can add options such as a production booklet maker, a saddle stitch finisher, and an interposer that provides the ability to insert pre-printed or color output within sets.
Ricoh is starting to show their confidence as an industry leader. The expansion of their product offerings in the emerging low-end office color market is an example of their ability to identify oppor-tunities that advancements in technology offer and their willing-ness to aggressively move into a newly developing area. Questions were raised regarding whether adding scanning functionality to high-volume equipment was really in the best interest of the dealer. The last thing a reseller of this device wants is to have a customer hold up printing output because someone is using the scanning feature. But, Ricoh assured us that the device can run print jobs while the scanner is in use, somewhat addressing contention issues. Allowing these devices to offer the same capabilities as the others sharing this platform (the Aficio 1060/1075 for example) gives customers the ability to have common devices with similar capabilities throughout their offices.
With this new set of product introductions, Ricoh has leapfrogged the industry in the high-volume black and white workspace as well as the low-end office color market place. We would expect Canon, Xerox and others to eventually refresh their portfolios. But, for the time being, Ricoh appears to have the edge.
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