WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
11-16-08
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- KIP provides more details on its new Color 80 wide format color system:
o Unlike most wide format color printers, this system uses toner and not ink
o Uses LED imaging instead of laser
o 600x600dpi (not 8 bits per pixel)
o Top speed of 2,160 square feet per hour (world’s fastest)
o 6 minute warmup time
o Holds 4 rolls of paper
o Total capacity of 6,000 square feed of media
o Can use plain paper, trace paper, film, gloss, up to 32lb. bond
o Maximum paper width of 36”
o Engine takes up 61” wide x 37.5” deep x 57” tall
o Weighs 2200 lbs.
o Needs a 220 volt, 16 amp circuit
o Accepts TIFF, JPEG, PNG, bitmap, GIF, PCS, TGA, RLE & RLC raster formats
o Accepts HPGL, HPGL/2, HP-RTL, PostScript, PDF & DWF vector formats
o Optional 2100 Scanner
600x600 (8 bits per pixel)
Up to 9.5” per second scanning for b/w
Up to 4.1” per second scanning for color
54” wide x 19.5” deep x 10.5” tall
168lbs.
Requires 120 volt outlet
o Optional stacker and fold unit
o MSRP for base engine and print controller = $105,985.00
Optional premium RIP = $3700.00
Optional 2100 scanner = $18,685.00
- Cooper’s & Lybrand study of office documents:
o 80% of corporate memory is on paper (contracts, memos, project plans, etc.)
o 90% of documents are merely passed along
o Average document gets copied 19 times in its life
o Average of $20 cost to file document
$120 to find misplace document
$220 to replace lost document
o 7.5% of all documents get lost
This means if office generates 200 documents a week, it will lost 15 of them, costing company $3300
o 3% of all documents get misfiled
o 50% of office worker’s time is spent looking for information
o Only 5-15% of time is spent reading documents
o Currently, there are 4 trillion paper documents in the U.S. and is increasing 22% or 880 billion a year
- The British Columbia Biomedical clinic of Canada announced it has acquired Laserfiche software to manage its documents.
o Scans average of 10,000 records per day
o Eliminated 25 man hours per day used to file and retrieve documents
- The value of color on documents according to InfoTrends:
o Reduces visual search time by 80%
o Improves comprehension by 73%
o Increases retention by 78%
- Bozeman Deaconess Hospital of Montana announced it has purchased DocuWare to manage its documents:
o Saved $20,000 per month in payroll costs due to improved efficiencies
o Reduce patient wait times
o Eliminated 20 man hours per day in document tracking
o Eliminated 4 hours per week in old lab order search time
o Also purchased 12 Fujitsu high end scanners and 8 Canon MFPs
o Dealer who won the bid was J&H Office Equipment
- The Environmental Protection Agency of the federal government has filed a complaint against Oce’ for its plant in Fiskeville, Rhode Island for allegedly violating environmental law. Spokesman David Deegan says that the company failed to adequately capture pollution.
- Hewlett Packard announced it sold an Indigo ws4500 production color system to Weber Marking Systems of Arlington Heights, IL. In addition, it sold an Indigo 7000 system to Frecklebox, a print shop that specializes in variable data direct mail printing.
- Hewlett Packard hired Mike Feldman from IBM and made him Vice President and General Manager in charge of enterprise sale of its printers and MFPs. He will report to Lynn Pendergrass.
- Hewlett Packard won a bid to supply 850 scanning systems to UPS to reduce paper usage.
- Hewlett Packard announced it will discontinue the use of music written by Gary Glitter in its ads, after it found out that the artist was convicted of child molestation and porn.
- Hewlett Packard officially approved the use of some Neenah paper types with its Indigo production color systems.
- Hewlett Packard won a lawsuit against a company which made unauthorized cartridges for HP printers. LexJet of southern California was ordered to pay an undisclosed sum to HP for patent violation.
- Ricoh announced that in 2009, it will also offer a Creo print server for the new Aficio PRO C900 production color system, which currently only offers EFI Fiery solutions. It also announced that the official MSRP for the base print engine is $117,500.00.
- New rules for leasing given to sales reps of local Ricoh factory direct branches:
o 0.02968 rate factor for FMV, 36 months
o 0.02105 rate factor for FMV, 60 months
o Banks used include Wells Fargo, CIT, DLL, GE and Bank of America
o Maximum funding of 125% of MSRP of Ricoh products
o Apparently does not require that original lease documents be sent to bank used
o Policy is not to store equipment for customer if it is still under lease with a third party
o Not currently booking leases to:
Real estate companies
Mortgage companies
Title companies
Any request for exceptions require last two years’ financial statement
- More details on Canon’s purchase of NewCal, a Canon dealer in San Francisco area:
o Founders/former owners were Steve Tarpley & Ken Wilkens
o Both started as copier technicians for Kodak
o Left Kodak to start their own copier servicing business in 1991
o As they were not an authorized dealer, they were denied ability to order parts from the manufacturer.
o They sued and it became a landmark case that established parameters for servicing companies to purchase parts from manufacturers
o At one time had taken over service of more than 100 Xerox DocuTechs
o Became a Canon dealer and had sales of $25 -$30 million
o Canon only bought the assets of the copier division
- Canon launched a new software solution called uniFLOW Output Manager, to help end users track copies and prints.
- Sharp announced that the base MSRPs of its new A4 Frontier series color laser MFPs, the MX-C311 and MX-C401 will be $7099 and $7995 respectively.
- Sharp was ordered to pay a $120 million fine and pleaded guilty to price fixing for color LCD displays after being charged by the U.S. Justice Department. Sharp reported $6.8 billion in sales last year for LCD panels.
- Sharp announced it has purchased some more dealers and converted them into Sharp factory direct branches:
o Kearns Business Solutions, former Kyocera dealer, in Greenville, South Carolina, and will be run by Tom Pickens
o First Choice Business Machines of Seattle, WA, run by Dan Taylor, and has 8 locations in Washington.
- Several recent studies have shown that many inkjet printers require end users to change out inkjet cartridges even when the cartridges are not completely out of ink. One of the main reasons is due to a decrease in image quality when a cartridge runs low on ink. Contrast this with color laser MFPs, which suffer no decrease in image quality, and if under CPC contract, end users need not worry about wasted toner.
- Lexmark launched a new A4 color laser MFP, the X782E XL offering:
o Base MSRP of $4499.00
o Also available as print-only device, the C782n for $1999
o Top speed of 35ppm color and 40ppm for b/w
o Optional auto duplex
o 800MHz processor
o 768MB RAM
o Banner printing up to 48” long
o Optional stapling finisher
o Optional 5 bin mailbox output trays
o 1200x1200dpi (does not offer 8 bits per pixel)
o Black toner cartridge with 16,500 page yield, based on 5% toner coverage, for $183.00 each
o Color toner cartridges with 16,500 page yield each, for $410.00 each
o 11 second first b/w page out time
o 8” color touch screen LCD control panel
o 50 sheet document feeder
o Up to 75gsm paper weight handling
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include supplies
- InfoTrends predicts that the year 2010 will be the first year where the average solution sale will eclipse a hardware only sale in revenue. It also predicts that the amount of hardware-only providers could decrease by 50%.
- Kodak announced it won a bid to provide 30 each of the NexPress production color systems to print shop locations of Consolidated Graphics.
- History of fax technology:
o Invented in 1843 by Alexendar Bain, a Scottish mechanic
o The word facsimile means to make similar
o The original patent was for “improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces and in electric printing and signal telegraphs”
o Mr. Bain combined parts from a clock and a telegraph to make the first fax machine
o The U.S. military adopted fax in 1943 to transit maps and weather charts
o In 1948, the Federal Communications Commission authorized the usage of fax machines in the office.
o Western Union made their own fax machines, and placed 50,000 Deskfax machines in their offices.
- The original name of Konica is Konishiroku Honten, and original name of Minolta was Chiyoda Kogaku Seiko Kabushiki Kaisha.
- Okidata started a “RED” program to allow its dealers’ sales rep to earn prizes for selling its color LED printers. The company also announced it will open up a factory direct branch in Argentina.
- Apparently if end users choose to buy cash, or use their own financing to get a Xerox copier, their click charge goes up as compared if they use Xerox’s leasing division.
- Xerox’s president, Ursula Burns gave out the following advice in an interview:
o Communicate – “Whenever you’re in a crisis you have to talk”
o Know the Culture – “work to build diversity”
o Have a Vision – show how to portray your company in the best of times
o People Matter – “the best strategy devised is worthless without a work force willing to adapt”
o Customers Matter Too – “the customer is the center of the universe” “customers aren’t always right, but you can’t tell them they’re wrong”
o Leadership is Key – “Good leaders are humble, focused and human. They put the enterprise before themselves”
- One of Xerox’s finest inventors, Christopher Snelling, pasted away. During his 44 years with Xerox, he received 101 patents.
- In another cost cutting move, Xerox laid off 50 workers in its Irish plant.
- Xerox announced it won a bid from IBM for MFPs, scanning and document management. What is worth mentioning is that IBM sold off its MFP and printer division (called InfoPrint) to Ricoh, yet did not award them the contract.
- The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, will be printed daily in New York on a Screen Truepress Jet520 production inkjet color printer at an Alphagraphics store. The unit can print up to 1200 newspapers an hour (each consisting of 48 tabloid pages)
- DHL, now owned by a German company, announced it is letting go of 9,500 workers as it abandons its air/ground shipping business in the U.S. This will mark the end of the familiar bright yellow trucks with red logos, and will let UPS and FEDEX fight over the 4% marketshare that DHL had.
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