WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
11-18-07
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- Canon introduced new low end b/w laser MFP, the imageCLASS MF7460, MF7470 and MF7480 offering:
o 25ppm top speed b/w
o Auto duplex
o Up to 11”x17” paper handling
o Print/copy/scan/fax
o 10/100BaseT and USB ports
o Document feeder holds up to 50opm
o Two 250 sheet drawers and 100 sheet bypass
o Print controller has PCL and PostScript print drivers
o MF7460 is copier/fax for $2995 MSRP
o MF7470 is copier/fax/printer for $3995 MSRP
o MF7480 is copier/fax/printer/scanner for $4995 MSRP
- Canon announced it will spend a record amount of money on upgrading its facilities and equipment at its plans in Japan, according to Jiji Press, a newspaper in Japan.
- Canon, which apparently wasted $1 billion in R&D money trying to enter the flat screen TV market with the failed SED technology, is going try again. It announced that it is investing $69 million into controlling interest in Tokki Corp. which owns technology for OLED screens (organic light emitting diodes), and hopes to speed up development, and bring Canon branded HDTV’s to market in the near future.
- Brendan Casey, VP of Color Platform Development for Xerox, was selected for inclusion into the Princeton University Premier Registry, for former grads.
- Xerox announced it is giving $319,000 to North Carolina State University for a three year initiative focused on professional service and innovation management. Unknown if this involves who the university chooses for their copier bid.
- Xerox announced it had placed two Xerox DocuColor 8000AP production color units at The Print Room Group of Bracknell, England, a print shop.
- Xerox announced it has placed a Xerox DocuColor 6060 and DocuColor 8000AP at Adprint Company, a print shop in Portland, Oregon.
- Xerox claims it has diverted 2 billion pounds of waste from landfills through reuse, recycling and remanufacturing.
- Xerox won a $70 million bid for University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Xerox claims it will replace a mix of 11,500 copiers, printers, fax and scanners with 3,000 connected MFPs, and Phaser printers.
- In a large direct mail campaign to boost interest in their color laser MFPs, Xerox sent out a mailer across the country offering the chance to win a new Apple iPhone if they respond to the mailer. As the iPhone is the most popular electronic gadget in the U.S., this mailer may prove very effective in generating interest.
- According to Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper of Japan, Ricoh is close to a deal to acquire IBM’s digital business operations for $700 million.
- Ricoh announced that the VP in charge of its printer division, Ann Moser, won a “Stevie” award for women business executives. In addition, Vince Roma was named VP of Business Development, which means he is in charge of their bid desk for both direct and dealer large opportunities. He reports to David Greene, VP of Sales.
- Ricoh let go of executives in charge of direct branch operations in Kansas City. Leaving was Bob Knighton, and Phil Hill.
- In an article in PrintWeek magazine, Chas Moloney, Director of Marketing for Ricoh Europe, when asked about reliability of production monochrome units said; “The problems occur when machines are purchased or used for volumes or applications they were not designed for. There are many reasons for this, sometimes it is the salesman’s fault for incorrect specification or sometimes users buy to a price or their needs change and they try to use inappropriate equipment for the application. There is a good reason why the Konica Minolta engine (bizhub PRO 1050) is more expensive than the Sharp (MX-M1100). For example, trying to produce 700,000 to 800,000 prints per month on the Sharp would make it seem unreliable, when in fact it is not designed for that volume.”
- Samsung of Korea announced that it is withdrawing from the Japanese marketplace. Even though it has a 11.8% share of the flat panel TV market worldwide, the fact that it is a Korean company apparently gives it handicap it can not overcome.
- Sharp announced it has renewed its GSA contract with the U.S. Federal Government on Schedule 36 through 2011.
- IKON won a bid to install a Canon imagePRESS C7000VP, a Canon imageRUNNER Pro 7110VP (relabeled 110ppm Kodak DigiMaster production b/w unit) and an IKON CPP650 (relabeled Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6500) to Provide LLC, a printshop in Newark, Delaware.
- IKON announced it has appointed Mr. Tracey Rothenberger as Senior VP and Chief Information Offices (CIO) reporting to CEO, Matt Espe.
- Magicomm, a software firm in Amesbury, MA, announced a new package called “Easy 1-2-1”, which is a variable data/web2print/PURL program for print shops that own digital production devices.
- EFI announced that two of its original board members will step down. Jean-Louis Gassee and Tom Unterberg have served since 1990.
- EFI also announced that it is buying back $100 million of its stock shares, in an effort to boost their value.
- JJ Bender, a distributor who markets lease return equipment to print shops, announced a new cost per copy lease on used Xerox equipment, called the “Either/Or Program”. It is advertised as offering:
o delivery and installed at no cost upfront
o customer just pays for the copies and prints made
o customer commits to a certain volume, and a 3 to 5 year contract
o this is similar to a cost per copy lease
- Kyocera announced it has entered into a cross licensing agreement with Microsoft. This means that the two companies will share access to patents that each company owns.
- Next big meeting for copier dealers is the ITEX show in Las Vegas on 2/21-22/2008.
- Why some R&D funds don’t go into making better copier/MFPs. Toshiba announced a new remote control toilet seat. The remote control operates:
o automatic lid opening
o warm water bidet
o seat temperature
- Hewlett Packard announced it had placed two Indigo 5000 series production color units at Remind-4U, a print shop that specializes in creating customized greeting cards.
- Hewlett Packard now has 4 Indigo production color systems at Finlay Printing or Bloomfield, CT.
- Kodak announced it has sold a NexPress M700 (a relabeled Canon imagePRESS C7000VP) to Turnpike Inc., a print shop.
- Kodak announced it has placed a Kodak NexPress 2500 system at Gator Media Group, print shop in West Caldwell, NJ.
- Adobe Corp. announced that its new President and CEO is Shantanu Narayen. He replaces Bruce Chizen, who got in trouble when he struck a deal with Fedex/Kinkos to place their logo link on Adobe Acrobat Reader software (this link has now been removed after outcry by independent printshops). Adobe was founded by former Xerox employees, John Warnock and Chuck Geschke.
- Toshiba announced it has hired a firm to test the yield of its copier toner cartridges and compare them against fake generics. QualityLogic Corp. conducted the test and found that factory original Toshiba branch toner cartridges yield anywhere from 28% to 43% more pages than toner made by Katun.
- Pitney Bowes announced it is dumping 1500 employees to cut costs. The company also announced it has retained a financial advisor to explore a plan to either spin off or sell its FM division, named Pitney Bowes Management Services, which has $1 billion in revenue and employs 12,000 people.
- Data storage trivia:
o Bit = 1 Bit = on or off
o Byte = 8 bits = single character
o Kilobyte = 1024 bytes = one page of text
o Megabyte = 1024 kilobytes = small book of text
o Gigabyte = 1024 megabytes = a movie at TV quality
o Terabyte = 1024 gigabytes = 50,000 trees made into paper and printed
o Petabyte = 1024 terabytes = 2 years of earth satellite data
o Exabyte = 1024 petabytes = all words ever spoken by humans
o Zettabyte = 1024 exabytes = everything that there is
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