Weekend MFP Industry Notes Newsletter
7-12-09
Xerox went to court in an attempt to repossess its equipment & supplies that are in the Meridian Automotive Systems plant in Brantford, Canada, as the company is closing. Previously, it was prevented from removing its equipment by a blockade of Canadian Auto Workers. Xerox also claims that it called the local police, but they were unwilling to help. The plant used to make plastic toner bottles for Xerox copiers and printers. Xerox testified that its toner supply will be affected if it is unable to obtain its property and move it to a facility in South Carolina.
Consortium Holdings, a financial firm, has lured Craig Fielding, formerly a senior manager at Xerox, to become its new CEO.
Xerox announced it will show its Concept Color 220 digital color press at the Print 09 Expo in Chicago in September (11th – 16th). The 220 is two iGen4’s bolted together, so it can produce 110 two-sided color documents per minute or 220ipm. MSRP will most likely exceed $1.5 million.
Xerox announced it has authorized a new dealer in England and Ireland. The Danwood Group will carry Xerox products from Phaser desktops to Nuvera production print systems.
In a book authored by Scott D. Anthony, called “The Silver Lining”, he states that in the 1950s, IBM turned down the chance to buy the copier patent portfolio from Xerox Corp. IBM hired a consultant named Arthur D. Little, who informed the company that even if it replaced 100% of the carbon paper market with the copy process, it still would not make enough money to justify the acquisition of the patents.
Another lawsuit over a copier lease. In Pennsylvania, Erie County was sued by its supplier, Duplicating Consultants, Inc. Details:
- In April, auditors claimed that the bid award was flawed because criteria for winning bidder was changed during process
- The review was requested after dealer sued county for $1.3 million and billed county for $1 million
- Auditors claimed that the dealer overcharged the county
- Also claimed that the county owed the dealer between $600,000 and $800,000
- Lawsuit was settled for $600,000 paid to dealer by county
One Managed Print Services software provider buys its competitor. FMAudit announced that it has acquired DocuAudit.
Apple Computer is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, over whether it was completely honest about the health condition of its CEO, Steve Jobs, who recently took a 5.5 month medical leave, and had a liver transplant.
IKON’s former CFO, Bob Woods, was named to the board of directors for Insight Enterprises, a large computer distributor in Arizona.
Oce’ announced it will hold a large production print show in Seattle in July. Guest speakers will be professors from local university.
Symcor, a print for pay in Toronto, Canada, announced it had purchased the Oce JetStream 1500 high speed color inkjet system for variable data applications.
Okidata announced it will reorganize its management team in the U.S.:
- Jim Hargadon is Advisor, Finance & Admin
- Mick Takahara is Advisor, Corporate Planning
- Kazutaka Onodera is Executive VP and CFO
- Stewart Krentzman is President and CEO
- Scott Becker is Executive VP of Sales & Marketing
Okidata announced it will buy a manufacturing plant in Takasaki, Japan from Renesas Technology, so it can increase its capacity to build LED color print engines. The company plans on doubling its sales by 2011. Purchase price unknown.
The Gartner Group released details on its study of document management systems:
- 75% of enterprises that establish an enterprise integrated document management plan will use a steering committee
- 65% of the startup costs will be spent on planning and development
- Enterprises that do not bring content under control, wasted work time will increase by 30% to 40%
- Office workers waste at least 10 hours per week managing documents
- Average document is copied 9 to 11 times at a cost of $18
- Documents cost about $20 to file
- Retrieving a misfiled document costs $120
IKON/Ricoh launched its own version of managed print services program, calling it “Ricoh Managed Document Services Program”. Details:
- Led by Dan Waldinger, Director of Strategic Marketing for Ricoh
- combines IKON’s professional services, sales, service & facilities management
- provides on-site and off-site management of fleets
- uses tagline; “MPS and Beyond”
- uses “DOCutivity” assessment program (originally developed by Lanier, which was acquired by Ricoh)
- total of 23 different modules are part of the program
- based on Prosci’s popular ADKAR change management model
- ADKAR stands for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability & Reinforcement
Ricoh launched its new Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technology for its MFPs equipped with Embedded Software Architecture (ESA). The SOA portal will enable enterprise customers to leverage IBM’s WebSphere software. This means that customers with Ricoh MFPs, can activate an IBM application from the MFP control panel.
Ricoh now shipping an A3 floor-standing color laser printer, the Aficio SP C820/821 series offering:
- launched by Ricoh product manager, Ije Rodgers
- 4 tandem OPC drum design
- 50ppm top speed b/w or color for 821, 40ppm for 820 model
- 50 second warmup time
- 600x600dpi (4 bits per pixel) or 1200x1200dpi (2 bits per pixel)
- Comes standard with two 500 sheet paper drawers & 100 sheet bypass
- Can add either two more 550 sheet drawers, or a large capacity letter size paper deck
- Handles up to 140lb. index stock
- Auto duplex supports only up to 90lb. index
- supports printing up to 49” long banners
- Built-in print controller
- 1GHz processor for 821, 600MHz for 820
- 512MB RAM (can upgrade to 1GB)
- 80GB hard drive standard on 821, optional on 820
- PCL & PostScript print drivers
- Finishing options include; stapling, booklet-making & hole punching
Ricoh updated its competitive product to Hewlett Packard’s Web JetAdmin, called Ricoh SmartDeviceMonitor:
- Launched by Ricoh product manager, John Carlomano
- No charge network device management software
- Displays status of printers/MFPs
- Control access privileges
- Configure NIC cards
- Can support up to 1,000 devices
- Optional Accounting Report Package allows monitoring of all print/copy/scan/fax activity with detailed usage reports by user and usage costs for chargeback
- ($900 for 5 devices, up to $3150 for 50 devices)
- Auto discovery
- See paper and toner levels
- Obtain meter reads
- Pop-up error notifications for service calls, low paper, low toner
Billback, LLC of Australia purchased nQueue, to create nQueue Billback, LLC. These two former competitors both make copier/print accounting systems, and will be led by CEO, Rick Hellers. The new company’s primary competitor is Equitrac.
Kofax, maker of scanning solutions, announced it won a $350,000 contract from EDCO Group, which is a business processing outsource provider of health document management services.
Canon launched a new A4 desktop color laser MFP, the imageCLASS MF8350 series, featuring top speed of 21ppm b/w or color, using 4 tandem OPC drum design. The engine most likely is same as that used in current Hewlett Packard CM2320 color lasers, as they are all made by Canon, and sell for as little as $599. The new imageCLASS MF8050 offers 8ppm color and 12ppm b/w.
Canon’s Satoshi Victi stated that thanks to the company’s investment in 3D modeling software in its research & development labs, it now only takes 3 months to design a new product.
According to Industry Analysts, the use of generic/non OEM parts and supplies by copier dealers is on the rise. This means that the usage of original parts and supplies made by the actual copier/printer manufacturers ii on the decline. The research group claims:
- over 60% of dealers use non OEM parts and supplies
- 13% of all supplies bought by dealers are non OEM
- Managed print service programs are driving the increase
- Kyocera is trying to stop this trend by telling its dealers that its 3 year warranty is void if they use non OEM parts and supplies
- Dealers may be spending as much as $600 million on non OEM supplies
- Many question the quality of the non OEM product. For example, one vendor, Katun, stated “Katun color toners were developed to meet business color end user expectations, where precise color matching is NOT a prerequisite”
Search engine giant, Google, announced its intention to launch its own operating system to compete against Microsoft, called “Chrome”. To retaliate, Microsoft stated it plans on launching its own search engine, called “Bing”.
Sharp announced it is now offering an embedded version of Print Audit software for its OSA equipped MFPs. Details:
- tracks print/copy/scan/fax
- rules feature that limits jobs based on user
- cost assignment by job and/or user
GreenPrint is shipping version 2.0 of its cost saving software. Details:
- Founded by Hayden Hamilton and James Kellerman in May, 2005
- Software prevents unwanted pages from being printed, such as; stray lines at end of web document, boilerplate at end of airplane ticket, blank PowerPoint slides, etc.
- Based in Portland, Oregon
- 168,000 end users have tried free version of software
- Only 25,000 end users are using it daily
- Version 2.0 is chargeable version for corporate users
- First sale was made to Asian company with 50,000 licensed users
- Next planned install is HSBC Bank
- Xerox is giving away the software for free with Phaser color wax printers
- Company now has 28 employees
- Version 2.0 cost is $70 per user
In Malaysia, police confiscated 25 kilograms of heroin found inside boxes of copier paper in an office supply truck attempting to load it onto an airplane.
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