Weekend Copier Notes from 11/30/08

WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
11-30-08

The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.


- Hewlett Packard announced results of its last quarter’s financials:
o $33.6 billion total revenue, up 19% (this included revenue from recently acquired EDS)
o Up only 2% if factoring out EDS
o Gross operating margin down 1.1%
o Net earnings down to $2.1 billion from $2.2 billion
o Imaging & Printing Group revenue fell 1% to $7.5 billion
o Consumer printer unit shipments fell 8%
o LaserJet printer and Indigo sales down 9%
o Color LaserJet printer sales down 13%
o Printer consumable sales up 9% (partially due to a 2% price increase)
o LaserJet MFP sales up 25%
o More than half of HP’s profit ($1.2 billion of $2.4 billion) is from supplies sold to in place HP printers

- During a recent trade show, Hewlett Packard announced that it plans to launch segment 4 and segment 5 copier/MFPs to compete against other A3 manufacturers. Other details:
o Quote from David Murphy, Chief of LaserJet & Enterprise Solutions Group; “The Edgeline expansion path is into light production, not into copier segments” (this is given as reason why new HP copier models will be laser instead of inkjet as used in Edgeline)
o since HP outsources for all laser engines, Mr. Murphy did not announce whether Canon would be the provider for these new color copiers (Canon provides HP with all other laser engines it currently sells)
o 4 different models will be launched, from 70ppm to 90ppm in speed
o In the past, HP has tried to go upstream in the laser copier/MFP market by sourcing from a variety of manufacturers including, Fuji, Konica, Canon, etc., without much success

- HP also detailed its success with Managed Print Services contracts:
o Claims it currently has 3,000 customers under a managed print services contract
 Collects $60 million per year from 3M
 Also has Ford Motor Corp. under contract
 75 of the contracts cover devices worldwide
 Current customer, Viacom, claims that when it moved to HP MPS contract, it removed 4,000 devices and supposedly is saving 25% per year
• When asked how he got employees to give up their personal desktop printers, Viacom CIO, James Simon, stated; “We told resistors to send an e-mail to the CFO to explain why they had to keep their personal printer. Not one sent an e-mail.”

- DocuWare gives out the following references for end users using its document management software:
o Fletcher Jones Mercedes Benz dealership in Newport Beach, CA
o Douglas County, Oregon
o Corrigan Dispatch Company of Texas
o Corsicana Bedding Inc. of Texas
o City of Niles, Michigan

- Xerox gave a sneak peak to analysts in Wilsonville, Oregon on 11/17/08 on a new 2009 product. Details:
o is designed to compete against traditional floor-standing, A3 color laser MFPs
o will compete against the Hewlett Packard Edgeline color inkjet A3 MFPs
o will not be laser-based and use toner, instead will use hot melted wax, as currently used in some, not all, desktop “Phaser” models
o will offer different speeds (fastest speed reached in low quality mode)



- Xerox announced it has sold a Xerox 700 Digital Color Press to Noel Tatt Group Inc, a printshop, that will use the 70ppm device to create personalized greeting cards.

- Xerox announced a new software option for its production print systems, called FreeFlow Express to Print featuring:
o visual graphic user interface
o job ticketing
o prepress functions
o drag and drop to add tabs, covers, chapter starts and watermarks
o screen shows a graphic representation of each page
o includes 70 templates
o page numbering
o Bates numbering
o Bar codes
o Pricing unannounced

- IBM announced that Xerox will be its preferred equipment provider for its facilities management division, named IBM Managed Business Process Services. (In the past, IBM used its own InfoPrint division, which relabeled Ricoh gear. Now that Ricoh purchased this division from IBM, this relationship is apparently severed)

- Konica Minolta announced it has completed construction of a new acoustic test laboratory in Mizhuho, Japan. The site, which received ISO/IEC 17025*1 accreditation, will use 10 super sensitive microphones to measure the noise level of future bizhub MFPs. This will insure that they continue to meet and surpass government guidelines.

- Zink Inc., a company formed by the former film division of Konica Minolta, announced a new digital camera with a built-in color thermal transfer printer, called the “XIAO TIP-521”, and offers 5 megapixel capture. Camera will most likely sell for $365.

- Inventors Josh Grob and Oleksiy Pikalo have developed an inkjet printer that can be used to create a pattern of sugar on top of the foam atop lattes and cappuccinos. Their company will be called “OnLatte Inc.”. They are looking for a $200,000 investment to get the company off the ground.

- Toshiba announced it will delay the construction of two new computer chip plants in Japan, costing $3.9 billion, due to weakening demand worldwide.

- Former IKON executive, Clair Christensen, was hired as VP of Business Development by Standley Systems of Oklahoma. Clair was formerly IKON’s marketplace president in charge of Kansas and Oklahoma operations.

- Lexmark is affected by recent financial crisis. Apparently, the company had $4.4 million worth of bonds held by Lehman Brothers, which just went bankrupt.

- More info on the new A4 b/w laser MFP from Lexmark, the X658:
o Top speed of 55ppm b/w
o Copy/scan/print
o Base MSRP of $3799
o Optional fax
o 50 sheet document feeder
o Auto duplex
o Optional stapling finisher
o Letter and legal size only
o Cost per page for toner only is $0.024 per page
o Customer must also buy:
o Fuser rollers
o Oil fuser wiper
o Wax fuser wiper
o Dual charge rollers
o Pick roll assembly
o RADF maintenance kit



- Street pricing seen recently in a bid in the Midwest that included one of the new Frontier series A4 color MFP models from Sharp:
o Sharp MX-C311
 31ppm top speed
 Letter and legal size paper only
 50 sheet document feeder
 Auto duplex
 One 500 sheet paper drawer standard
 100 sheet stack bypass
 Did not include staple finisher
 Includes print/scan controller
• 800MHz processor
• 80GB hard drive
• PCL & PostScript print drivers
 Total bid price was $3899.00
o B/w clicks @ $0.021 and color clicks for $0.05 (while the color click price is very aggressive, the b/w click price is very high)
o Options available and price:
 Second 500 sheet paper drawer for $435.00
 Deck with third and fourth 500 sheet drawers for $355 each
 Inner stapling finisher for $1565
 Attachment to allow stack of business cards to run through document feeder
 Fax kit for $625
 Data security kit
 XPS (Microsoft Windows Vista) driver $625
 1 GB RAM upgrade for $500
 Kits for embedded software $349 each
o If customer were to buy consumables separately:
 Black toner, yield of 10,000 pages based on 5% coverage per page, for $45.00
 Color toners have yield of 10,000 pages each, based on 5%, for $117 each
 Waste toner bottle, yield of 15,000 pages, for $37
 Black developer, yield of 60,000 pages, for $153
 Color developers, yield of 30,000 pages each, for $158 each
 Black drum, yield of 60,000 pages, for $102
 Color drums, yield of 30,000 pages each, for $102 each
 Primary mylar film transfer belt, yield of 120,000 pages, for $250
 Transfer kit, yield of 120,000 pages, for $190
 Secondary mylar film transfer belt, yield of 50,000 pages, for $58
 Fusing unit, yield of 120,000 pages, for $425
 Heat roller kit, yield of 120,000 pages, for $320
 Ozone filter, yield of 120,000 pages, for $23
 Paper feed roller kit for $15
 MF feed kit for $13
 RADF feed roller kit for $27

- Sharp announced it has agreed to license light emitting diode (LED) technology from Nichia Corp., which invented the first blue LED in 1993, and the first white LED in 1996. Both rely on gallium nitrided technology.

- Ricoh now offering a new scanning solution for its MFPs, called GlobalScan NX offering:
o Can capture document through scanning from MFP, and distribute it to e-mail inbox or fax number
o File document directly to network folders
o Can drag and drop icons to create pre-defined fields
o Can modify the workflow behind the button on the copier control panel
o LDAP, NT and Kerberos Authentication
o Pricing not announced

- Ricoh announced that it has promoted Mark Minshull to VP and Chief Technologist overseeing solution technologies.



- Ricoh announced it will spend $20 million to open up product showroom in Singapore and Sydney, Australia.

- Ricoh gave out more details of its upcoming entry level A3 color laser MFPs (which will compete with the new Sharp Frontier series), and will be called the Ricoh Aficio MP 2000 series offering:
o Aficio MP C2030spf (scan/print/fax)
 20ppm color or b/w top speed
 4 tandem OPC drum design
 Ricoh PxP toner (polymerized)
• Black toner yield of 10,000 pages based on 5% coverage per page
• Color toners yield of 5,500 each
 600x600dpi
 4 line LCD display
 512MB RAM
 TWAIN scanning standard
 No hard drive available
 Up to 11”x17” in drawers, and up to 12”x18” in bypass
 No finishing available
 Base MSRP of $5500.00
 Tentative cost per color click of $0.084
o Aficio MP C2050 is same as MP 2030 but also offers:
 Large color touch screen LCD control panel
 Optional 50 sheet stapling finisher
 Optional hole punch
 Scan to e-mail/FTP/SMB/USB
 Hard drive
 MSRP of $5800.00
o Aficio MP C2550 is same as MP C2050 except it offers:
 25ppm top speed color or b/w
 Base MSRP of $7500.00

- More details on the new Ricoh Aficio MP C2800, C3300, C4000 & C5000 color laser MFPs:
o 4 tandem OPC drum design
o Ricoh PxP polymerized toner
o Base MSRPs of $10,750, $12,550, $13,995 & $17,250 respectively
o 28ppm, 33ppm, 40ppm and 50ppm top speeds for b/w and color
o 600x600dpi and 1200x1200dpi print modes (does NOT offer 8 bits per pixel)
o Top scan speed of 40opm for C2800 & C3300
o Top scan speed of 60opm for C4000 & C5000
o Comes standard with 1200 sheet paper supply
o Maximum paper supply of 4,400 sheets
o C2800 & C3300 have 50 sheet document feeders
o C4000 & C5000 have 100 sheet document feeders
o Auto duplex is standard
o Finishing options include stapling, hole-punching and booklet making
o Up to 12”x18” paper handling
o Print controller for C2800 & C3300 offers 600MHz & 80GB hard drive
o Print controller for C4000 & C5000 offers 1GHz & 160GB hard drive
o 1GB RAM
o PCL print driver standard
o Optional PostScript driver
o Scan to e-mail, FTP, SMB, USB
o Optional fax board
o 120K PM cycle
o 20,000 page yield for black toner
o 15,000 page yield for color toners

- Ricoh’s InfoPrint division (IPS) announced it will resell the Printelligence software from Preo Software Inc., to assist the company in offering managed print services.



- Canon’s Managing Director, Masahiro Osawa, told Reuters New Service in an interview that the company will pursue acquisitions of copier dealers in the U.S. to strengthen its sales network in the U.S. after losing IKON to Ricoh.

- Canon announced it has sold an imagePRESS C7000VP production color system to The Processors, a printshop in Irwindale, CA.

- Kodak announced it has sold a NexPress S2500 production color system to Evergreen Printing of New Jersey.

- More details on Memjet Technology, the company that promised to revolutionize the industry with a low cost, high speed color inkjet system:
o was invented by Kia Silverbrook of Australia
o Company is backed by two wealthy investors:
 Ray Stata, cofounder and chairman of Analog Devices, a $2.5 billion Massachusetts-based semiconductor company
 George Kaiser, the twentieth-richest American, a Oklahoma oil, gas and banking mogul with assets of $12 billion
o First product will ship in late 2009
o Prototype shown to industry reporters offered:
o 60ppm top speed for low quality mode (1600x800dpi)
o 30ppm top speed for high quality mode (1600x1600dpi)
o Uses five rows of page wide inkjet printhead arrays
o Possible selling price of $499
o 2300 patents issued so far, with 2000 pending
o Plan is to sell low cost replacement ink rather than expensive cartridges, as inkjet heads have long life
o Memjet will make components only, and its OEM partners will actually make and market the printers (the identity of the electronics makers that will market Memjet is still being kept secret)

- Details reported on Oce’s last quarter’s financials:
o Total revenue down 7.1%
o According to chairman, Rokus van Iperen, the firm was hurt by a slump in orders from financial-services firms for continuous-feed machines (used to print account statements and other transactional documents)
o Consumable revenue down 7%
o Operating earnings down 20.7%
o Operating loss of 11.2 million euros
o Net loss of 23.7 million euros
o Wide format sales down 4.5%
o FM revenue up 5.9%\

- Kyocera announced it has purchased Action Copiers of Victoria, Australia. The company also named Bill Kohler as its northeast regional sales manager in the U.S.

- Epson introduced the world’s first true disposable color inkjet printer. The Epson EC-101 color MFP has built-in ink bags. When the unit runs out of ink, the customer returns it to Epson, who refills it and puts it back up for sale.

- Data from InfoTrends about sales of MFPs in the U.S. in 2007:
o 283,244 color MFPs placed (A3 & A4)
o 1,180,466 b/w MFPs placed (A3 & A4)
o Currently, there are a total of 8.6 million copiers installed, and 24.3 million workgroup printers installed in businesses in the U.S. (does not include personal printers in the office)