WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
1-27-08
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- Toshiba now shipping new b/w MFPs, the eSTUDIO 203, 233 and 283 models featuring:
o 20, 23 & 28ppm
o 64K to 90K per month duty cycles
o Optional auto duplex on 203, standard on 233 and 283 models
o One 550 sheet drawer standard on 203, two standard on 233 and 283 models
o 100 sheet stack bypass on all models
o 600x600dpi (2400dpi with interpolation)
o Finishing options include stapling, hole punch, and booklet making
o Tilting LCD touch control panel
- IKON lets go of the person in charge of all sales & service in the U.S.:
o Brian Edwards, Senior VP of Sales and Service in the U.S. is out. (he started in 1985 as a sales rep in a dealership that eventually sold out to IKON, and worked his was up in the company)
o CEO, Matt Espe, formerly of GE, has named Jeffrey Hickling, also from GE, to replace him
- IKON announced it has won a bid for 27 copiers from the Noblesville, IN school district. It was a five year, dollar out lease, with monthly payments of $66,686.00.
- IKON apparently in more legal trouble:
o The Ninth Circuit Court reversed a district court decision to dismiss a lawsuit brought against IKON by local dealers.
o Dealers who were suing are; Newcal, Pinnacle Document Systems and Kearns Business Solutions, all in California.
o Dealers allege that IKON was engaging in a scheme to amend their current customer’s service contract and leases by lengthening the term without informing customer.
o Dealers claim that this violates antitrust laws from Sherman Act, false advertising under Lanham Act and racketeering under RICO.
o Dealers claim that these contract extensions prevented IKON customers from switching to a competitors’ products and services.
- IKON reported its last quarter’s financials:
o Net income down to $15 million, from $27 million prior year
o Total revenue was down 1%
o “lower than expected equipment revenue in North America”
o New plan announced to reduce expenses by $25 million this year
o Plan on eliminating 350 employees
o Will take a pre-tax charge of $7 million related to job cuts
o Equipment revenue down 6% to $393 million
o b/w copier sales down 14%
o production sales down 16%
o 39% increase in production color sales
o Gross margin on equipment of 25.9%
o Gross margin on service/supplies down to 43.4% from 43.9%
o Professional services revenue up 7% to $206 million
o FM revenue up 10%
o Professional services gross margin up to 27.6% from 26%
o Will reduce executive bonuses
o Cash balance declined to $142 million
o Debt increased to $746 million
o Current inventory of $357 million, up from $288 million
- EFI, maker of Fiery print controllers, announced that it has selected Xactly Inc. software to manage its sales compensation programs worldwide. It also announced that it would use Paid, Inc. software to allow dealers and end users to automatically calculate shipping/handling costs when ordering product from EFI.
- EFI announced its last quarter’s financials:
o revenue down 1%
o net income grew to $7 million from $3.5 million
o gross profit decreased to $84.6 million from $88.9 million
o total revenue of $152 million
- Hewlett Packard announced it has purchased Exstream Software, maker of variable data software. Rumored purchase price was $1 billion.
- A Xerox DocuColor 240 color MFP was sold to Ag Press, a print for pay shop in Manhattan, Kansas. What is odd is that they bought it from Fuji of Japan, and not Xerox. (as you know, most Xerox product is actually made by Fuji)
- Xerox began an e-mail campaign named “Win a HD-TV/DVD Combo”. Details:
o respondents are entered in sweepstakes for 26” Polaroid color LCD HDTV-DVD combo unit
o Ad highlights b/w and full color MFPs from Xerox
o Offers 250 free color copies per month for the life of the lease for a Xerox color MFP (equivalent to roughly $1000 baked into a lease)
- Notes on competing against Xerox DocuColor 242, 252 or 260 color MFP models:
o Made by Fuji of Japan, not by Xerox USA
o When equipped with EFI Fiery, the only scanning available is Fiery Scan or WebScan (no scan to e-mail or scan to SMB)
o End user is responsible for replacing 10 different cartridges (toner, drums, fusers, etc.)
o End user is also responsible for sending used cartridges back to Xerox
o At an average of 21,000 copies per month (mix of b/w and color), expected service calls are once every 7 weeks
o Designed to operate from 15,000 to 50,000 copies per month (mix of b/w and color)
o Slows down to as little as 11ppm when printing thick stocks
o Thick stocks (80lb. cover and above) must be run through the stack bypass
o Coated stocks recommended for bypass only
o Can only auto duplex paper, and not card stock or glossy stocks
- Xerox sold two iGen3 systems, three Nuvera 120s and a DocuColor 250 color system to Passkey Systems, a print shop in Nevada.
- Xerox reports details on last quarter’s financials:
o profit rose 79%
o will spend an additional $1 billion to buy back stock to boost share price (has already spent $631 million in 2007 buying back stock of its original $1 billion commitment)
o net income of $382 million, as compared with $214 million a year earlier
o total revenue up 8% to $4.9 billion
o post sale revenue up 12%
o number of pages printed on color systems is up 30%, growing color revenue by 14%
o 14% of pages printed under contract are in color
o professional services revenue up 8%
o 10% increase in equipment sales
o production color unit sales up 3%
o production b/w unit sales down 10%
o Color MFP unit sales up 67%
o Gross margin of 40.5%, down 0.5%
- Global, a division of Xerox, will continue to buy copier dealers. After recently losing his job as VP of Ricoh, Tom Salierno was named Senior VP of Acquisitions for Global/Xerox. He will report to Michael Shea, who is now president and CEO of Global, as he replaced founder Tom Johnson, who retired after sale of Global to Xerox. (undoubtedly they will target current Ricoh, Gestetner, Lanier and Savin dealers for acquisition)
- Ricoh announced it has sold an InfoPrint 5000 production color inkjet system to Fiserv, Inc. It will be used by Fiserv’s Personix division to produce full color transpromo documents (statement marketing).
- Ricoh’s Print Director software won a “Pick of the Year” from BLI.
- Oce’ announced it will offer Kodak Creo print controllers for the CS650 and CS620 models, which are relabeled Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6500s. It also launched the cm6520, which is a relabeled bizhub C650.
- Oce’ now shipping the im3512 and im4512 b/w MFPs, which are relabeled versions of Sharp MX-M350 an dM450 models.
- Oce’ will show the new JetStream production inkjet systems at the DRUPA show featuring:
o 600x600dpi
o Uses piezo crystal inkjet head technology from Miyakoshi of Japan
o Base MSRP of $2.9 million
o Up to 1074ipm simplex speed, or 2,148ipm duplex speed
o Uses rolls of paper only
o No special paper types required
o Up to 20.5” wide paper handling
o Up to 40lb. bond paper weight
o In-line hole punch, perforation and folding
o Uses water based dye inks
o Max duty cycle of 33 to 66 million per month (1100 or 2200 models)
o Currently lacks support for PostScript
o 20 liter ink tanks
o Auto drying system
o Optional integrated digital camera-verification system to remotely check print quality
o According to Lyra Research, print quality is superior to similar machines Ricoh InfoPrint 5000 and Kodak Versamark
- Brother introduces the world’s first desktop 4 drum color laser MFP that sells for less than $1000. The DCP-9000 series offering:
o all other desktop color laser MFPs use only one drum, and have fast b/w speeds, but slow color speeds
o print/scan/copy with optional fax
o uses four tandem OPC drums
o uses polymerized toner
o 20ppm color or b/w speeds
o $59.99 for black toner cartridge with yield of 2500 pages based on 5% page coverage
o $69.99 each for the color cartridges, each with a yield of 1500 pages
o $199.99 for drum unit with yield of 17,000 pages
o $24.99 for waste toner bottle
o $129.90 for mylar film transfer belt with 50,000 page yield
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include supplies
o Letter and legal size paper only
o Auto duplex option
o PCL and PostScript emulations
o USB port with optional 10/100BaseT
o Base MSRP of $599.00
- Samsung of Korea announced plans to ship two new laser MFPs later this year:
o SCX-6355 will be a 55ppm version of existing 45ppm SCX-6345
§ Letter/legal only
§ Fax/copy/print/scan
o Yet un-named color laser MFP
§ Letter/legal only
§ Fax/copy/print/scan
§ 25ppm color or b/w
§ 4 tandem OPC drum design
o Will most likely be relabeled by Muratec & Xerox as they both relabel the current versions
- Aurora Office Automation Corp. of Taiwan is an authorized dealer for Konica Minolta equipment. In Taiwan, it markets the product with the bizhub name, but in China under the Aurora name. It plans to have 1,500 locations open in China by 2011.
- Paper usage study reported by Lyra Research:
o 2.7 trillion sheets of paper used by digital copiers and printers worldwide in 2007
o Equivalent to 13.5 million tons
o Approximately 500 square miles of forest harvested to supply paper
- Survey from whattheythink.com:
o 24% of all graphic arts firms offer web to print solution
o 10% of all web to print users see it as a top sales opportunity
- Interesting data from America Association of Port Authorities:
o Top five imports into Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach Port, CA
§ Furniture
§ Clothing/shoes
§ Office machines/computers
§ Autos/trucks/motorcycles
§ Toys
o takes an average of 22 days for office equipment made in China to reach the port via boat
§ average cost to ship one large container full of office equipment from China to LA is $3500.00
§ the two ports features 78 miles of combined waterfront
§ handle 43% of nation’s imports
§ handled $256 billion in trade per year
- In a survey of office workers paid for by Okidata, and conducted by IDG Research Services Group revealed:
o Over 50% expect to print more often in the future as they do today
o 77% prefer to review printed documents versus reading them on a computer screen
o Small companies printed a higher percentage (15%) of documents than large companies (7%)
- FMAudit of Missouri lets go of their president and CEO, Rich Piper. Details:
o Prior to FMAudit, Rich spent time at Canon & IKON.
o Kevin Tetu was named new president and CEO, formerly VP of Technology.
o Tetu, Daniel Ricardo and Greg Allen founded company in 2003.
o Greg Allen is COO
o Company specializes in software to manage devices on network and collect meter readings
- J.P. Morgan analysts are warning companies that paper costs for copiers may increase by as much as 36% as compared to pricing in 2006.
- Kansas City, Missouri launches an audit over the award of a copier bid to a dealer named Perfect Output, who is a Xerox sales agent. City councilman, Terry Riley is accused of inappropriate interference in influencing the bid award. Allegations include improper communication between Riley and the city’s IT director, Gail Roper. Ms. Roper has left her job, and now resides in Raleigh, NC. The audit committee recommends rejecting the bid. The previous contract holder, Ricoh Business Systems, has raised a protest.
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