WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
5-24-09
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from various trade publications.
- Xerox stunned reporters when it announced that its popular CEO, Anne Mulcahy, would step down on 7/1/09. She will replaced by current president, Ursula Burns. She announced the company would reduce its research & development spend to $883 million.
- Hundreds of retired Xerox workers are picketing at the company headquarters as they are upset that Xerox stopped providing them with $1400 per year to cover healthcare costs. The move will supposedly save the Xerox $11 million per year.
- In a move to promote its managed print services program, PagePack, Xerox is now offering 250 free color clicks per month for the first year.
- Competing against the Xerox 700 Digital Color Press? Some insight from the owner’s manual:
- designed for an average of 35,000 prints/month (based on letter size, single sided output on 24lb. paper)
- if running at 35/month of 24lb. paper, end user should expect a service call every 5 weeks
- lead edge and trail edge deletion of 4mm
- side edge deletion is 3mm, except on 13”x19” paper where it increases to 3.5mm
- 150 second warmup time
- Color consistency of DeltaE = 7
- Registration of back to front of duplexed prints is + 1mm on 8.5” x 11”
- Copier’s control panel tells end user to call for service when it runs out of staples, and when waste toner or hole punch waste bin is full
- End users are warned that when closing paper drawers too forcefully, paper size mismatch errors may occur
- If paper is changed while unit is in sleep mode, paper size mismatch error may occur
- It is not recommended to auto duplex coated/glossy stocks from the paper drawers, instead must use the optional LCT
- While unit does handle up to 300gsm, it slows down to 35ppm for letter, and 15ppm for 13”x19”
- Auto duplex supports up to 220gsm only
- In solid areas, level of gloss may not consistent across the page, from sheet to sheet, due to fluctuations in fuser temperature with thicker stocks, as the lower fuser roller does not have a cooling fan.
- System slows down dramatically to hole-punch or staple
- System slows down dramatically when running jobs with mixed paper sizes or paper weights
- Charge corotron grids must be replaced every 175,000 pages
- Competing against the Xerox 4127 production monochrome system? Points to remember:
- designed for volumes of 80K to 350K/month (based on 8.5”x11” 20lb. bond single sided output)
- first print out time of 7 seconds in high resolution mode
- 5 minute warmup time
- Up to 216gsm paper weight in standard paper drawers
- Up to 253gsm using LCT
- Edge deletion of 4.1mm on all sides of sheet
- 1mm back to front registration
- Is designed for customers to replace the Fuser Cleaning Cartridge and the Drum Cartridge
- Xerox launched the Phaser 7500 desktop color laser printer featuring:
- Base MSRP of $2999
- 35ppm b/w or color
- 1GHz processor
- 1200x1200dpi (not 8 bits per pixel)
- Up to 12”x18” as well as banner printing
- Xerox launched three new color laser MFPs, the WorkCentre 7425, 7428 and 7435 featuring:
- Made by Fuji of Japan
- 7425 offers 20ppm color and 25ppm b/w for base MSRP of $15,589
- 7428 offers 28ppm color and 28ppm b/w for base MSRP of $17,589
- 7435 offers 35ppm color and 35ppm b/w for base MSRP of $19,589
- Max monthly duty cycles of 60K, 80K and 105K respectively
- Document feeder holds up to 75 originals only
- Comes standard with 100 sheet stack bypass and one 520 sheet drawer
- Paper supply options include:
- Stand with three 520 sheet drawers
- Stand with 520 sheet drawer and 2000 sheet letter size only large capacity deck
- Side mount 2000 sheet paper deck for letter size only
- Optional feeder for 60 envelopes (replaces top paper drawer)
- Up to 12”x18” from bypass, up to 256gsm
- Copy resolution of 600x600dpi, print resolution up to 1200x1200dpi
- 2/4 bit selectable output (does not offer true 8 bits per pixel image quality)
- Uses Emulsion Aggregate (EA) polymerized toner w/4 tandem OPC drum design
- Large touch screen color LCD display (no swivel)
- user can customize the control panel
- can embed applications via Xerox EIP technology
- Auto duplex standard
- Optional fax board
- Built-in print controller (actual maker unknown)
- 667MHz processor
- PCL and PostScript print drivers standard
- 10/100BaseT port standard (1000BaseT not available)
- Optional USB port
- 1.5GB RAM/40GB hard drive
- Optional EFI Fiery upgrade
- Optional scan to e-mail, SMB, FTP, LDAP
- Optional scan to searchable PDF
- Optional Scan to Home (scans to folder as directed when user authenticates)
- Optional CAC card enablement kit
- Optional SD card reader
- Optional finishers offer stapling, hole-punch and booklet maker
- Xerox launched the WorkCentre 6400 color laser MFP featuring:
- Base MSRP of $4299 (fully loaded $6298)
- made by Fuji of Japan
- A4, meaning only letter/legal paper handling
- 32ppm color and 37ppm b/w
- Max duty cycle of 120K/month
- 8” full color touch screen LCD display
- Auto duplex standard
- Scan to e-mail with LDAP
- Optional 30 sheet stapling finisher
- Optional Scan to desktop with conversion to Work or Excel
- Up to 2400x600dpi (does not offer true 8 bits per pixel image quality)
- 4 tandem OPC drum design
- Optional fax
- Built-in print controller offers:
- PCL and PostScript print drivers
- 80GB hard drive/1GB RAM/800MHz processor
- 10/100/1000BaseT and USB ports
- 50 sheet document feeder
- Comes standard with 100 sheet bypass and 500 sheet paper drawer
- Up to 210gsm in bypass only
- Optional additional 500 sheet trays for max capacity of 1600 sheets
- Xerox revealed more details on how it plans on charging for color clicks with its new wax color copier, the ColorQube 9200 series:
- The “Useful Color “ mode will be billed at 1 cent per copy, the same as a b/w document. However, end user can only use a maximum of 1.2% color coverage on a letter size page. For example, this would be a logo that is less than 8 tenths of an inch wide, made with only one color
(cyan, magenta or yellow).
- The “Everyday Color” mode will be billed at 3 cents per copy. However, end user can only use a maximum of 8% color coverage on a letter size page. For example, this could be a logo that is slightly more than 1.3” wide, that uses all 4 colors of wax.
- The “Expressive Color” mode will be billed at 8 cents per copy, and will be charged if using more
color than 8%.
- Neither the control panel or the print driver tells the end user how much color is on the page, so the end user will not know what they are being charged until they run a report showing which
mode was used.
- Therefore, the end user may be quite surprised how much their click charge bill is even if they did not use much more color than a new logos or colored headlines.
- If end user chooses to buy the wax chunks separately, the cost is:
- Each color wax chunk has yield of 9,250 pages, but is based on letter size page with only 5% coverage, with box of 4 selling for $176
- Black wax yield of 10,000 pages, with box of 4 selling for $570
- Cleaning unit, with yield of 200,000 pages
- document feed roller kit has yield of 150,000 pages
- replacement feed tires for paper drawers have yield of 600,000 pages
- Details on the wax spray print heads:
- uses 4 printheads to cover width of paper
- each printhead is size of a deck of playing cards
- each hot wax nozzle is 37.5 microns wide
- nozzles fire at 43KHz
- each printhead as 880 nozzles (220 per color), which if clogged, causes lines in print
- produces 150 million drops of hot wax spray per second
- Hewlett Packard gave out details of its second quarter fiscal year performance:
- profits fell 17% to $1.7 billion
- sales dropped 5%
- currently has 321,000 employees
- will build a $260 data center in Colorado Springs, CO but will close a call center their that employs 800
- will build a call center in Rio Rancho, NM to employ 1,350
- overall, will let go of 6,400 employees to cut costs
- mandatory 5% cut in company wide salaries
- printer sales down 31%
- Bowing to pressure from its Indigo printshop customers, Hewlett Packard announced it will scale back its MarketSplash on-line site that was supposed to sell printing to end users. HP has eliminated all advertising for the site and will shut down the site entirely in September. It will relaunch it later this year merely as a site to assist owners of HP desktop printers.
- Konica Minolta launched the Nassenger VII, which is a high speed, wide format, color inkjet printer designed to print on textile/fabric. It features 512 nozzle printheads to deliver a print speed of 210 square meters per hour, on fabric that is 1850 millimeter wide.
- Konica Minolta announced it is partnering with Guided Therapeutics Inc. of Norcross, GA to develop non-invasive cancer detection products using LightTouch technology.
- Kyocera launched its own managed print services program, FASTtrack, for its dealers, based on software from FMAudit.
- Competing against Kyocera color laser MFPs? Apparently their new models do not use polymerized toner, and use a fuser oil web. This old technology can create image consistency problems when the fuser rollers dry out over a long run.
- Borrell Associates released a stuffy that predicts that spending on direct mail will decline 39% during the next 5 years. The company believes that more marketers will move to e-mail advertisements. If this prediction is true, this does not bode well for growth of full color production print system volume.
- Former IBM Business Unit Executive, Michael Maupin, has joined The Water Training Institute, which will launch its Certified Managed Print Services Sells Program on 9/16/09 in Philadelphia, PA.
- Fedex Kinkos has sold its locations in England to The Color Company for an undisclosed sum.
- XPEDX launched a new line of paper designed for production color systems, called “Endurance Digital”
- advanced surface for uniform color application and toner adhesion
- 91 brightness
- Gloss and silk coatings
- Contains 15% post consumer waste fiber
- Ricoh announced that several of its production print systems won Editor’s Choice award from Better Buys For Business magazine, including the Pro C900, Pro 906EX, 1106EX and 1356EX.
- Ricoh announced its last quarter’s financials:
- total revenue declined from 579 billion yen to 523 billion yen
- copier/printer revenue down 10.6%
- copier/printer profit down 90%
- operating margin was negative 2.3% , as compared with 9% last year
- net income declined form a profit of 21 billion yen to a loss of 23 billion yen
- Ricoh announced it is now offering account tracking software from Technesis. The Technisis Print Control System offers:
- tracks by user, group and/or device
- can differentiate between color and b/w pages
- offer print assessments
- rules based messages promoting better printing efficiency
- delivers summary reporting
- tracks copies, scan, faxes and prints
- integrates with ODBS compliant databases, ERP systems
- Canon reported its last quarter’s financials:
- Revenue down from 1 trillion yen to 700 billion yen
- Net income down from 107 billion yen to 17.7 billion yen
- Net sales down 31.8%
- imaging revenue down 35.1%
- operating earnings fell 63.8%
- printer sales down 41.9%
- cut its research & development spend from $808 million to $739 million
- Copier sales down 34.7%
- Profit down 63.8%
- forecasts that its operating margin will be only 5.1%, as compared with 12.1% last year
- Fuji (maker of most Xerox products) reported its last quarter’s financials:
- Revenue down from 709 billion yen to 530 billion yen
- Operating income down 42.7%
- Lexmark reported its last quarter’s financials:
- operating profit down 40%
- revenue down 20% to $944 million
- printer/MSP sales down 30%
- announced it had won managed print services bids from Boeing, Coca-Cola and Union Bank of California
- overhead will be cut by $47 million
- operating expenses cur by $32 million
- will close its Juarez, Mexico inkjet cartridge plant
- Epson reported its last quarter’s financials:
- Revenue declined from 310 billion yen to 216 billion yen
- Net income declined from a loss of 3 billion yen to loss of 123 billion yen
- Sales down 30.4%
- Peerless, maker of generic print controllers, announced its last quarter financials:
- Revenue declined from $9.3 million to $2.2 million
- Gross margin decreased from 65.2% to 30.3%
- Samsung announced its last quarter’s financials:
- Net income dropped 72%
- Revenue rose 9%
- Sharp reported its last quarter’s financials:
- Revenue was down from 3.4 trillion yen to 2.8 trillion yen
- Net income was down from 101.9 billion yen to a loss of 125 billion yen
- Copier sales down 14.4%
- Zoran, maker of generic print controllers, reported its last quarter’s financials:
- Revenue declined from $109 million to $68 million
- Net income declined from loss of $4.7 million to a loss of $21 million
- Brother reported its last quarter’s financials:
- Revenue fell 25% to $1.43 billion
- Posted operating loss of $39 million
- Printer sales down 20.4%
- Oce’ reported a 60% increase in sales of used copiers, claiming it sold 5,000 units in 2008. In addition, over 90% of these were leased, rather than purchased outright.
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