WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
6-14-09
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from various trade publications.
Densigraphix, a Buffalo, NY company that makes generic toner cartridges, announced it has joined the Business Technology Association (BTA), which most copier dealers in the U.S. belong to.
BTA (Business Technology Association) announced the results of a survey of copier dealers in the U.S.:
- Superior Performance as a Primary Product Line Provider = Toshiba
- Corporate Support = Toshiba
- Inventory = Toshiba
- Distribution = Kyocera
- Product Line = Kyocera
- Outstanding Performance As a Secondary Product Line = Muratec
- Availability of Sales Training = Kyocera
BTA is hosting an educational event for copier dealers on September 24th & 25th:
- At the Ritz Carlton Hotel in White Plains, NY
- Presenters are Frank Cannata, John Hey, Kate Kingston, Mitch Morgan, & Mike Woodard.
- Event concludes with attendance at Yankee Stadium with Yankees and Boston Redsox
.
Kyocera announced it has hired Print Management Solutions of Ormond Beach, FL to provide training to its dealers on the Kyocera FASTrack managed print services program.
Kyocera launches a new color laser desktop A4 MFP, the FS-C1020mfp offering:
- 21ppm top speed color or b/w
- 35 sheet document feeder
- 250 sheet paper drawer
- 256MB RAM
- Copy/print/scan/fax
- 400MHz processor
- 600x600dpi
- PCL & PostScript print drivers
- Optional 500 sheet second paper drawer
- Base MSRP of $1220
Buyers Labs Inc.(BLI) gave out a “Outstanding Document Management Solution” award to docSTAR.
BLI gave out its spring 2009, “Pick” awards for MFPs. Winners included:
- Sharp MX-2600N
- Sharp MX-3100N
- Xerox WorkCentre 7425, 7428 & 7435
- Canon imageRUNNER 5050N
- Konica Minolta bizhub 601 & 751
- Sharp MX-4101N & MX-5001N
- Toshiba eSTUDIO 6530CT
Katun of Minneapolis, MN announced it now offers lower cost, generic color toners for the Canon imageRUNNER C3200, C2880 and C3380 color laser MFPs.
Canon announced it would restart the construction of a digital camera factory in Nagasaki, Japan. It will open in 2010 and employ 1,000 workers.
Samsung announced it is offering a zero percent lease promo for its printers and MFPs. Leasing provided by DeLage Landen (DLL).
IDC announced that in the first quarter of 2009, the new Sharp Frontier series of color laser A4 MFPs were the most popular product in the 31ppm to 44ppm category of color MFPs. Unknown if this means more company were downgrading from A3 (ledger size) to A4 (letter/legal size), or if they were replacing desktop color laser printers and bringing more sales into the MFP market.
Sharp announced it was headed for its first ever operating loss and would cut 1,500 jobs to save money.
Xerox is partnering with a popular magazine to offer customized color covers. For $19.99, end users can get a special edition of National Geographic with their own color cover. The orders will be printed using a Xerox iGen4.
Former Xerox executive, Al Byrd, was on his way home in Atlanta, when he noticed that it was gone. A demolition crew apparently got the wrong address, and tore down his home by mistake.
Xerox launched a video campaign on the Internet, called “Information Overload Syndrome” to promote its document management solutions.
Xerox launched a new web2print solution, called Xerox Services 7.0. It is part of its FreeFlow Digital Workflow Collection. With a base MSRP of $20,000, it now supports basic text and image customization with interactive previews.
Upcoming conventions in the print for pay industry include:
- Xerox Real Business Live Event = Des Moines, IA on 6/10/09
- Xerox Real Business Live Event = Los Angeles, CA on 6/11/09
- Xerox Real Business Live Event = Oklahoma City, OK on 6/17/09
- ICED Convention = The Woodlands, TX on 6/18-21/09
- Print Sales & Marketing Executives = Las Vegas, NV 6/21-24/09
- Franchise Services Corp = San Diego, CA 7/29 – 8/2/09
- EFI Connect = Las Vegas, NV on 8/2-5/09
- Alphagraphics Convention = Chicago, IL on 8/6-8/09
- Allegra Network Convention = Chicago, IL on 8/26-29/09
- Print ’09 on Chicago, IL on 9/11-16/09
- National Association of Quick Printers (NAQP) = Austin,m TX on 10/29-31/09
- Print Industries of America (PIA) = Orlando, FL on 11/8-10/09
PIA released data on the print for pay industry for the first quarter of 2009:
- Printing shipments were down 9.4%
- Offset printing down 10.8%
- Toner based printing up 8.8%
- Average printing prices declined 3.5%
- 72% of printshops reported sales declines
- Projected decline for rest of 2009 of 6.5% and 3% in 2010
Street pricing seen in the print for pay market:
- Canon imagePRESS C6000 w/Fiery/booklet-maker/RADF for $66,000. Color clicks @ $0.053 and b/w clicks @ $0.0125. 11”x17” billed as one click.
- Canon imageRUNNER 7095 w/print controller/stapling finisher for $21,750 with b/w clicks @ $0.0039. 11”x17” billed as one click.
- Xerox 4127 w/Fiery/bookletmaker/hole punch/LCT for $43,700. B/w clicks at $0.00615.
11”x17” billed as one click.
- Ricoh Aficio PRO 906EX w/print controller/stapling finisher/hole punch/LCT for $21,400.
B/w clicks @ $0.0052. 11”x17” billed as one click.
Ricoh announced a new promo to increase sales of its new Ricoh PRO C900 production color system:
- End user gets 300,000 clicks/pages for free (color or b/w)
- Offers ends 7/31/09
- Customer must sign up for a minimum of a 2 year service/supply contract
Ricoh sent out a press release announced that its IKON San Diego branch sold a PRO C900 production color system to a print shop named; “Print & Letter Company”. (is this device such a poor seller that they have to send out a press release every time they sell one to boost interest?)
Ricoh launched Print Copy Scan (PCS) Director 6, featuring:
- Print management software package
- Includes PCS Assessor, which is a sales tool that allows a full version to run at customer site for 60 days, providing ability to analyze volumes and survey equipment. Rep can use to create MPS proposals.
- Consists of three core modules; Analysis, Rules and Recovery
- makes graphical reports
- users can belong to multiple groups
- can create highly configurable rules to customize how print jobs behave
- can base cost on total pages, color pages and total b/w pages
- restrict MFP access and features per user or groups of user
- tracks all printing including local, networked and direct to IP jobs
- embedded using Ricoh’s Java SDK platform
- PCS Suite pricing details:
- 5 seat pack = $1026
- 10 seat pack = $1944
- 25 seat pack = $4725
- 50 seat pack = $7900
- Up to 20,000 seat pack = $216,000
- PCS Analysis only pricing details:
- 5 seat pack = $257
- 10 seat pack = $486
- 25 seat pack = $1183
- Up to 20,000 seat pack = $54,000
- PCS Director embedded module:
- 1 MFP = $898
- 5 MFPs = $2248
- 25 MFPs = $4948
- Up to 250 MFPs = $21,950
- Professional Services – ½ day = $875
- HID card reader kit = $299
- CASI card reader kit = $299
- NexWatch card reader kit = $299
Dell Computer announced it has so far sold $3 million worth of PCs, printers and accessories using Twitter.
Interesting statistics from Nuance, makers of the popular OmniPage OCR scanning software:
- Average office worker types at 34 words per minute
- Only 58% accurate when typing on computer
- Factoring out the errors, actual average speed is 15 minutes to type one page of text
- OmniPage is up to 99% accurate for OCR
Okidata’s CEO, Stewart Krentzman, was interviewed recently, and made these comments:
- In 2008, business grew by just less than 2%
- Still selling close to 10,000 printers per month
- By 2012, 70% of businesses with 250 employees or more are going to be in a
managed print services environment
Wind River Systems Inc., maker of technology for print controllers and MFPs, announced it has been acquired by Intel for $884 million.
How expensive is ink for a color inkjet printer?
- ink averages $60.88 per ounce
- Chanel #5 perfume is $44.11 per ounce
- Don Perignon Champaign $4.53 per ounce
- Milk is $0.03 per ounce
Hewlett Packard and IDC announced survey of office workers and usage of copy machines:
- Average salary of knowledge workers = $60,000/year or $28.25 per hour
- Average salary of administrative assistants = $36,822 or $16.21 per hour
- Estimated annual labor cost of one 8 minute trip per day to a copy machine = $961.30 per year for knowledge workers, and $540.20 per year for admin worker
Fuji, maker of most Xerox products, had its president, Tadahito, make comments during an interview about is business in Asia, where it markets the products under its own name:
- 22% of its revenue was from facilities management
- Has been making Xerox products for 47 years
- Is in charge of East Asia, Pacific and Australia (Xerox has rest of world)
- Operating profit margin dropped 42.7% over past year
- Will reduce total employees by 7%
Bowe Bell & Howell announced new high speed scanners, the Ngenuity series:
- can scan originals from rice paper to plastic cards to stuffed envelopes
- top speed of 150opm at 200dpi for b/w or color
- uses SharpShooter Trilinear CCD camera
- white LED illumination
- Up to 600dpi at slower speeds
- Steel paper path
- Rubber rollers last up to 600,000 scans
- MSRPs range from $18,000 to $35,000.
Wondering when to offer an EFI option for an external Fiery print server?
- EFI Impose should be proposed if:
- Customer wants to define full bleed area and crop marks for trimming
- Want to arrange prints so when stacked up, they can be cut correctly (i.e. business cards, postcards, etc.)
- May wish to rearrangement of pages in a booklet
- Ability to multiply images an align them on a large sheet (business cards)
- Templates available so do not have to create workflow each time
- EFI Compose should be proposed if:
- Want to put tabs into documents
- Able to print documents that use different types of paper throughout the documents
- Can produce single document using pages from multiple documents
- Control where in document auto duplex is used, and precise control over finishing options
- Wish to make last minute changes to document without going to back to original
application that created it
- Need to create chapters or sections in documents
- Customer wants to see multiple preview views of document
- EFI Color Profiler Suite should be proposed if:
- End user wants their computer screen and printer’s output to be very close in color
- Can create profile for their specific production color system, rather then used canned
profile that came “in the box”
- Wants output of two different production color systems to resemble one another
- Would like to check to see if a color proof in accordance with industry standards
- EFI Graphic Arts Premium Package should be proposed if:
- End user wants to review exact color proof before printing
- Need to simulate the effect of the color of the paper to the color of the output
- Create custom halftone screens to simulate offset press output
- Want to change files to other types, like CT/LW, PDF2GO, ExportPS, DCS 2.0, EPS,
PDF/X TIFF, TIFF/IR, JPG, etc.
- Wish to check document for errors, i.e. preflighting
- Get control of trapping, where color overlays another color
- Can add color bars to edge of full bleed document to check registration and color management
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