WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
10-19-08
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- In an interview, Kirk Yoshida, chairman and CEO of Ricoh stated:
o After IKON is officially acquired by Ricoh, IKON sales reps will be told to “refrain from soliciting any Ricoh, Lanier, Savin or Gestetner account of an authorized Ricoh, Lanier or Savin dealer.
o The main focus will be upgrading current IKON customers to Ricoh products (it is estimated that IKON has 720,000 non-Ricoh products in the field)
o After acquisition, Ricoh’s office equipment revenue will surpass that of Xerox worldwide
o Currently, Ricoh’s revenue is $16 billion, while Xerox’s is $17.2 billion
o Canon’s office equipment revenue is $11 billion, but $24.9 billion overall
- Ricoh claims that during the Total Print! Show in England, it sold 18 of the new Aficio PRO C900 production color systems. The company will also sell the product in its InfoPrint division, which it acquired from IBM. The product will be labeled InfoPrint ProC900
- Ricoh announced that Nori Goto, who was running all operations in the U.S., will be returning to Japan. Martin Brodigan, who previously ran the Canadian operations, was promoted to President and CEO. Dennis Dispenziere, formerly Director of Account Services, is now Senier Vice President and CFO.
- Ricoh launched several new A3 color laser MFPs, the Aficio MP C2800/C3300/C4000/C5000 series featuring:
o These replace the Aficio MP C2500/C3000/C3500/C4500 series
o 28ppm, 33ppm, 40ppm & 50ppm speeds respectively (color or b/w)
o Base MSRPs of $10,750, $12,550, $13,995 & 17,250
o Use polymerized toner, called Ricoh PxP technology
o Full color touch screen LCD control panel
o Up to 1200x1200dpi (does not offer 8 bits per pixel)
o Paper drawers hold up to 140lb. index, up to 11”x17”
Two 500 sheet paper drawers standard
Top drawer holds letter size portrait paper only
100 sheet stack bypass holds up to 140lb. index
o Auto duplex supports up to 90lb. index only (can not auto duplex 10pt.)
o 6.5 second first copy out time for color and 3.9 seconds for b/w
o 45 second warmup time
o Optional analog fax board
o Reversing automatic document feeder holds up to 50 originals, up to 50opm scan speed
o Built-in print controller
Scan to e-mail/LDAP/SMB/FTP/URL/TWAIN
600MHz processor for C2800/C3300, 1GHz for C4000/C5000
1GB RAM and 80GB hard drive
PCL print driver standard
Optional PostScript driver
o Optional finishers include booklet maker &2/3 hole punch
o 120K PM cycle
- A Ricoh branch sales rep apparently gave a $3500 bribe to a school official. In White Plains, NY, Arthur Ross, formerly head of purchasing for Mount Vernon School District, was convicted by Westchester County Court of accepting the bribe, and then awarding a contract to Ricoh. The 5 year contract was for over $1 million, and included 73 copiers, and was awarded on 8/3/2005.
- Ricoh also announced it will launch on 12/1/08 a new series of A4 color laser MFPs, the Aficio MP C2030, C2050 & 2550 featuring:
o 20ppm and 25ppm speeds
o Letter/legal size paper only
o Optional internal finisher with stapling
o Optional hole punch
o Built-in print controller
Scan to e-mail/LDAP/SMB/FTP/USB/TWAIN
o Full color LCD touch screen control panel
o 1200x1200dpi (not 8 bits per pixel)
o Optional fax board
o 26 second warmup time
o MSRPs not yet announced
- Street pricing seen in the print for pay market:
o Xerox 700 Digital Color Press w/Creo/LCT/staple sorter for $60,100. Color click at $0.049 and b/w clicks at $0.0129. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Used Xerox DocuColor 242 w/Fiery for $12,500 with color clicks at $0.069 and $0.0129 for b/w clicks. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Canon imageRUNNER C5185 w/Fiery/booklet maker for $20,500 with color clicks at $0.069 and $0.01 for b/w. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Canon imageRUNNER 7105 w/Fiery/booklet maker/LCT/hole-punch/cover inserter for $34,100 with b/w clicks at $0.0042. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o IKON Print Center PRO1050 w/stapler sorter/paper feed unit for $37,500 with b/w clicks at $0.0039. 11”x17” billed as one click.
- When IKON stops selling Canon, and combined with loss of distribution of DANKA and Global, Canon will lose $1 billion in sales worldwide.
- Xerox announced new finishing options for its monochrome (b/w) production print systems:
o SquareFold Booket Trimmer provides creased covers, and face trims the edges of booklets
o High Capacity Stacker allows up to 5,000 sheets on a roll away cart
o Enhanced Booklet Maker, saddle stitches up to 25 sheets (100 page booklet)
- In the cable TV show “Mad Men”, the one of the props on set is the first Xerox copier, the 914 model.
- Xerox now offering version 7.0 of its FreeFlow server with following new features:
o Base MSRP of $4000
o enhanced color matching
o intuitive interface for simple job submission
o customizable security features
o can scan documents from MFP and have them routed to production systems for printing
- Xerox’s document assessment program is called Office Document Assessment:
o Uses both FM Audit and PrintAudit to track printer usage
o Takes 8 to 12 weeks to complete
o Uses Lead Six Sigma Methodology
o Includes three components:
“Voice of Customer” is result of customer interview of company environment
“Voice of the Process” maps out workflow
“Voice of the Environment” discusses all costs such as employee labor, equipment kilowatt hours of power used, and cost of square footage taken up by machines.
o 30 consultants cover the U.S.
- Oce’ claims to have won a bid where it replaced 1100 copiers and printers, and 1000 fax machines with 400 networked MFPs.
- Strahm Automation & Mailing Services of Kansas City, MO acquired an Oce’ ColorStream 10000 production color system. This system uses rolls of paper, and produces full color at 172ipm.
- Integrated Book Technology of New York purchased Hewlett Packard Indigo 7000 production color system, which can print full color at 120ppm.
- Home Dialysis Plus announced it will create a machine to clean blood using inkjet cartridge technology from Hewlett Packard.
- A firm in Montreal, Canada was launched to market used, refurbished copiers to businesses in the U.S. It is called “copierscopiers.com”
- Sharp announced a new option for its MFPs, from Cyptek Corp. The option is the DCL310S Netgard card reader, which companies or government agencies can use to prevent unauthorized usage of the MFP.
- Brother Corp. announced it will use Pitney Bowes technicians to provide on-site service to end users who have Brother laser printers.
- Toshiba provided more details on its Encompass program:
o a document assessment program for managed print services
o According to Bill Melo, VP of National Accounts Marketing & Operations, stated that up to 13% of its sales are result of document assessment
o Manages both Toshiba and non-Toshiba branded equipment
o Uses Six Sigma Methodology
o Has 9 analysts to cover the U.S., who receive a straight salary
o Uses FM Audit’s USB discovery tool
o Average time to complete an assessment is 4 days
o Creates a floor plan of customer’s office using Adobe Illustrator
o Data is imported into Toshiba’s Encompass, which includes QuickQuotes to create proposal for end user
o Currently Toshiba is producing 2,000 proposals per month
o Encompass is available to dealers on a subscription basis (pricing not stated)
- Kyocera at its dealer meeting announced that for its new TASKalfa series of copiers will have a 3 year or 300,000 click warranty for all parts. In other words, dealers who sell these models would not have any parts cost for up to 3 years.
- When asked if using only dealers would allow Samsung to gain marketshare in the MFP industry, SungHwan Yo, VP of Product Planning, stated; “We may re-evaluate the possibility of buying a direct operation”
- Vermilion County, Illinois, is reviewing its decision to award a $200,000 copier bid to CDS Office Technologies, after protests were raised by other dealers.
- EFI announced it has purchased another wide format color inkjet printer manufacturer. Raster Graphics of San Jose, CA, maker of Daytona series products, was purchased for $3 million.
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