WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
7-13-08
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- Hewlett Packard announced that it has sold 4 Indigo 7000 production color systems to White House Custom Color, a print shop in Eagan, MN.
- HP held a meeting in June, where it made a presentation to copier dealers to try to recruit them to sell the slow-selling Edgeline inkjet MFP product.
- A former VP of Hewlett Packard’s printing division was indicted by federal prosecutors for sharing confidential information. Apparently, Mr. Atul Malhotra, while working in the printing division of IBM, acquired confidential pricing information right before he left to take the VP job at Hewlett Packard, and e-mailed the info to HP executives. HP fired him shortly thereafter.
- Canon announced it will spend 15 billion yen to build a digital camera plant in Nagasaki, Japan.
- Kodak announced it sold a NexPress M700 (relabeled Canon imagePRESS C7000VP) to Venus Printing, in the United Arab Emirates.
- eCopy conducted a forum at its headquarters in New Hampshire for software developers and copier manufacturers to show off the new ShareScan Software Development Kit. New version offers:
o write-once universal form designer
o supports any eCopy enabled device without modification
o no need to tweak forms before deploying to different devices
o updated .NET Connector Wizard for building modules that let backend applications integrate with eCopy
o additional SDK controls
o ability to localize applications using language glossary
o can integrate with more than 85 leading application software packages
o now more than 200 software partners
o will now take an average of 25 days to develop, test and launch new application
- Ricoh announced that X-Solutions, maker of DigiDocFlow software, can now be embedded into Ricoh ESA equipped MFPs.
- Ricoh plans a production print meeting for its dealers in New York City later this month. (most likely to unveil the C900 production color system)
- Ricoh announced it will now offer an EFI Fiery option for the C6000 and C7500 color MFPs.
o named the E7100
o 1.8GHZ processor
o Embedded
o $7800 MSRP
- According to What They Think magazine, there are now more than 200 printshops that offer ability to order on-line print jobs for shipment in U.S.
- Xerox announced it has hired former Citigroup executive Charles Prince to its board of directors.
- Xerox announced it has sold a DocuColor 5000 and a 4110 b/w system to KCS, a print shop in England.
- Xerox announced it has hired SubscriberMail Inc. of Lisle, IL to manage and produce an e-mail advertising campaign to increase sales of its printers and MFPs.
- Charleston Copier & Fax, a Xerox sales agent, has changed its name to Docugraphics LLC, and relocated to 2408 Ashley River Road in Charleston, NC.
- Xerox settled out of court in a lawsuit the company filed against the city of New Delhi, India. The copier company was trying to force the city to prohibit businesses from taking used copiers, and selling them as new with the Xerox logo on them.
- Recent testing from an industry lab on the new Xerox WorkCentre 5638 revealed:
o 38ppm b/w copier
o Base MSRP of $7995
o 512MB RAM & 80GB hard drive
o MSRP of $10.920 when equipped with print controller and finisher
o Optional booklet making
o Optional single or dual line fax
o Optional color scanning
o Below average reproduction of fine lines
o Uses pulverized toner
o Fuser area runs at 200 degrees Farenheit, and is very hot when removing jams
- Police in Topeka, KS arrested Vincent Cunningham for making counterfeit $20 bills using a color copier.
- Two copier dealers in North Dakota merge. Fireside Office Solutions and MicroFrontiers are both located in Bismark.
- X-Rite Corp, which recently purchased Pantone Corp. announced it is selling its headquarters in Grandville, MI for $10 million. It will lease the property from its new owners.
- A company in Georgia claims to have invented a way to make toner out of soy beans. Tom Gandolfi, president of AIR Inc., claims his company can make toner from soy beans grown in Ohio. The new technology will be called “BioRez” and “Rezilution” and will be offered to printer and copier makers. Mr. Gandolfi also claims that:
o more than 400 million pounds of toner are used in the U.S. each year
o more than 3 trillion pages each year are produced by laser copiers and printers in the U.S.
o soy beans are currently used to make ink for some offset printing presses
- Punch Graphix of Belgium announced it has sold 3 of the Xeikon 6000 production color systems to Consolidated Graphics Inc (CGX). Unknown which CGX locations will receive these systems.
- Punch will show off the latest Xeikon production color LED systems at an open house at its facilities in Itasca, IL on 7/10 & 7/14. This includes the new Xeikon 8000, which offers top speed of 244ppm, at 1200x1200dpi with 4 bits per pixel.
- The next bid trade show for display of digital production systems is the Graph Expo show in Chicago on 10/26-29/2008.
- Heidelberg of Germany, the world’s largest offset press manufacturer, announced that sluggish sales will force company to lay off 500 workers.
- The Copier Dealers Association (CDA) will hold their next meeting in Colorado Springs, CO in July.
- Electronics For Imaging, maker of Fiery print servers, will hold its annual convention, EFI CONNECT, in Las Vegas in July.
- Canon announced it has authorized TPM, a dealer in Greenville, NC to carry its product line. Owner is Jerry Cooper.
- Printable Technologies, maker of variable data software, announced version 2.6 of FusionPro featuring:
o users receive notifications
o administrative control over response notifications
o ability to add contact lists to live campaigns
o flexible data cleansing options
o multilingual PURL support
o allow downloading of CSV files, instead of just Microsoft Excel files (which has a limit of 65,000 records)
- Conexant of Newport Beach, CA purchased the print controller division, named SigmaTel, from Freescale Semiconductor, which is headquartered in Texas. 50 existing employees will be transferred to new owner.
- IKON announced it will carry the latest version of the Kodak Creo print controller and call it the IKON PowerPro Plus. This controller will drive the IKON CPP550 and CPP650 (which are relabeled versions of the bizhub PRO C5500 and C6500)
- Street pricing seen in the print for pay market:
o Canon imagePRESS C7000VP w/paper deck/RADF/booklet maker for $158,000. Color clicks @ 0.057, b/w clicks @ $0.0125. Single click 11”x17”
o Canon imageRUNNER 7095 w/Fiery/bookletmaker/LCT/hole-punch/cover inserter for $27,900 with b/w clicks @ $0.0045. Single click 11”x17”
o Xerox 4127 w/Fiery/bookletmaker/LCT for $42,900 with b/w clicks for $0.0052. Single click 11”x17”.
- McCusker & Company of Leakwood, KS, announced that it won a bid to provide service across the country for an unnamed national copier company. The copiers are located in grocery stores, convenience stores, copy centers, and office supply locations. The company also provides service for other products like surveillance cameras and air-conditioning systems.
- Toshiba announced it is now shipping new color MFPs, the eSTUDIO 2830C, 3530C and 4520C, replacing the 2500C, 3500C, 3510C & 4500C models. New models offer:
o Top speeds of color or b/w at 28ppm, 35ppm and 45ppm respectively
o 56K/month to 70K/month maximum duty cycles
o 2830C has base MSRP of $12,999
o 3530C has base MSRP of $16,999
o 4520C has base MSRP of $20,999
o 4 tandem OPC drum design using a mylar film transfer belt
o Automatic document feeder can scan at up to 57opm
o Comes standard with stackless automatic duplexing
o Pulverized toner infused with wax
29K yield for b/w
25K yield for colors
o 600x600dpi with 8 bits per pixel
o eFine edge enhancement technology
o optional fax board, with option for second fax line
o 8.5” color LCD touch screen control panel (it will tilt, but it does not swivel side to side)
o 8.4second first color copy out time, 6.5 seconds for b/w
o 99 second warmup time
o Optional eCopy
o Comes standard with two 550 sheet paper drawers and 100 sheet stack bypass
Options offer with two more 550 sheet drawers, or a 2500 sheet letter size only drawer
All paper sources, including the auto duplexer, support up to 140lb. index
Bypass supports up to 100lb. cover, and banner printing
o When Toshiba reps show print samples, they most likely will show customer samples on AquaAce paper. This is a very expensive, glossy sheet of plastic, and most customers, while impressed with high gloss, will not pay the high premium for this paper, that can only be acquired from the Toshiba dealer or branch (for up to $1.00 per sheet)
o Comes standard with generic built-in eBRIDGE print controller (actual manufacturer unknown, but most likely Wind River Technologies)
Optional Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) hard drive security kit
Optional hard drive overwrite
Scan to e-mail/FTP/SMB/LDAP with PDF/TIFF/JPEG/encrypted PDF format choices
PCL/PostScript/XPS print drivers
10/100BaseT and USB ports (does not offer 1000BaseT Gigabit Ethernet)
Can print from or scan to a USB memory stick
Optional embedded ReRite OCR, so scanned images are automatically run through an optical character recognition software for conversion to Word documents
Optional upgrade to genuine EFI Fiery controller
o Finishing options include:
Hanging 50 sheet stapling finisher
Floor standing stapling finisher
Floor standing booklet maker
Optional hole punch
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