WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
12-16-07
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- Buyers Labs Inc. (BLI) gave out 2007 Pick of the Year awards to:
o Canon imageRUNNER C3380 color MFP
o Canon imageRUNNER 5075 b/w MFP
o Canon imageRUNNER 3035 b/w MFP
o Entire Ricoh desktop printer lineup
o eCopy
o MWA Intelligence (remote device usage tracking software)
o Xerox WorkCentre C7328 color MFP
o Oce’ imagistics CM 2510 (what is odd is that this is a Sharp unit, but yet Sharp did not win award for same model with their name on it)
- Hewlett Packard placed an Indigo production color system for $529,000.00 to Grossman’s Paper Co., a print shop in Petaluma, CA.
- Hewlett Packard purchased another maker of color inkjet wide format printers. NUR Macroprinters of Israel was acquired for $117,500,000.00. NUR makes printers that image as wide as 16.6 feet on rolls of paper.
- Hewlett Packard director, Lucille Salhany, sold 17,345 shares of her HP stock.
- Hewlett Packard’s head of its printer division, VJ Yoshi, stated to the press; “Don’t underestimate the power of paper. It’s the cheapest kind of storage you can find.”
- Hewlett Packard announced it will turn over 750 midmarket accounts currently being handled by direct organization to its dealers.
- Dealer in Fargo, North Dakota hires 5 away from local Toshiba branch. Liberty Business Systems, a Lanier/Oce’/Kyocera dealership, lured away Jeff Olson, Mike Kovarik, Mike Brundin, Nathan Purser and Mark Pierce.
- Toshiba announced it is moving its factory direct branch in Massachusetts into a new 32,000 square foot facility at 800 Research Drive in Wilmington Technology Park.
- Toshiba announced it has purchased the following to convert into factory direct branches:
§ Copier Sales MBM Inc., Akron, Ohio
§ ImagePro Ltd. of Cleveland, Ohio
§ Former owners Scott Baldwin & Bill Salm
§ Founded in 1971 by Gary Miller, now retired
§ Toshiba, Sharp & Oce’ dealer
- Toshiba announced it is opening a research & development lab in Vietnam to work on embedded software systems.
- DANKA released info on its latest financials from their second quarter:
o total revenue of $105.2 million, down 3.5%
o equipment & supply sales of $47.5 million, down 1.1%
o service revenue of $54.6 million, down 5.8%
o gross margin of 34.9%
o net interest expense of $4.4 million
o net loss of $14.4 million
o total liabilities of $232,390,000.00
- Konica Minolta Europe announced it has hired Brazilian soccer star; Ronaldo de Assís Moreira (aka “Ronaldinho”) to be star of new TV ads for bizhub color MFPs.
- New dealer for Konica Minolta in England. Document Solutions, which was an exclusive Xerox dealer, announced it has ended its single-source relationship with Xerox so that it can also offer Konica Minolta bizhub PRO production print systems. Owners are David and Steven Cavanaugh.
- Xerox announced it has sold a DocuColor 7000AP (70ppm production color system) to Letterworks, a print shop in England. It bundled the system with XMPie software for Web2Print variable data.
- Car dealers use full color, variable data direct mail. Survey by Motor Trader magazine found:
o 57% will increase their color budget in 2008
o 96% use direct mail
o 58% drop in newspaper ads
o 70% increase in on-line ads
o 38% felt it was most effective use of ad dollars, while 36% prefer on-line, and 9% for newspaper ads
- A survey conducted by Xerox indicates that 70% of banks are having difficulty implementing variable data direct mail advertising, due to challenges in gathering accurate data on their customers.
- Ricoh, through its IBM InfoPrint division, announced it has sold an InfoPrint 5000 production color system to Vesa Direct, a print shop in Spain. The 5000 is actually a high speed color inkjet system made by Screen of Israel that sells for $500,000.00.
- Increase in color mailers in 2008? BtoB Magazine stated that based on a survey, it expects 60.1% of its subscribers to spend more money in 2008 on marketing/advertising.
- Oce’ imagistics is now shipping more relabeled b/w MFPs made by Sharp. The im3512 (aka Sharp MX-M350) is 35ppm and im4512 (aka Sharp MX-M450) is 45ppm.
- A study of law offices in the U.S. conducted by Oce’, found that 56% will spend more money in 2008 on records management systems. This means more opportunity for scan/retrieva/OCR software solutions sales next year.
- More info on the new Oce’ JetStream production color systems:
o use piezo crystal inkjet heads from Brother/Kyocera
o manufactured by Miyakoshi of Japan, and relabeled by Oce’
o Base MSRP of $2,900,000.00 for JetStream 1100 (simplex model)
o Base MSRPof $5,400,000.00 for JetStream 2200 (duplex model)
o 600x600dpi
o 7 to 15 picoliter size ink droplets
o Use rolls of paper
o Top speed of 500 feet per minute
- Lexmark announced it has received two patents from the U.S. Patent Office for laser printer technology:
o “Method and apparatus for reducing Q factor in oscillating laser scanner” from Martin Klement & Daniel Pawley.
o “Two part cartridges with force biasing by printer” by Philip Carter, Julie Fain and Mark Foster.
- Pacific Office Automation, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, announced it now has 560 employees, with locations covering Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Arizona & Utah. It supplies all locations from Portland using a 110,000 square foot warehouse.
- Sharp announced it has purchased Unicopy Digital Business Systems of Phoenix, AZ
§ Owner was Gary Clancy
§ Mr. Clancy was part of the original Unicopy, which had several locations that sold to DANKA.
§ Unicopy will be folded into existing Sharp branch in Phoenix, which was formed when Sharp acquired Imaging Systems of Arizona, which was owned by Randy Davidson, who was also a partner in the original Unicopy.
- According to study conducted by InfoTrends on what paper sizes are used for printing:
o 11% of volume is A3 (which means 11”x17” or ledger size) when printing in b/w
o 12% of volume is A3 when printing in color
o 13% of volume is A3 when b/w copying
o 14% of volume is A3 when color copying
o 100% require some A3 size copying and printing
o 100% expect need for A3 to increase in future
- According to study conducted by GATF, sales of digital color output by print shops will increase 7.7% next year.
- Target Department Stores report that two customers were arrested when they attempted to return a desktop color MFP that still have fake printed money still inside the machine.
- IDC’s survey of print management revealed:
o Only 5% of copier dealers offer this type of program, where laser printers are provided, serviced, and supplied for one click charge to customers.
o 50% of copier dealer reps discuss it with customers
o 50% of customers don’t track usage of their printers
o 33% of customers have understanding of cost to operate printers
- SYNNEX, a computer distributor, offers a print management program that dealers can sell to customers. Currently, Synnex claims it has 250 dealers in U.S. who use this program. It is an authorized distributor for HP, Kyocera and Konica Minolta desktop printers.
- The State of Utah announced it has purchased Kofax document scanning management software, so it can eliminate 1,000 file cabinets scattered throughout the state.
- Chicago State University is investigating why $251,000 was spent to buy only two Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6500 color copiers.
o Without going to bid, the two machines were ordered from a company, named Abdullah & Warren (A&W) Group, that is owned by Michael Vernon Warren, who happens to be the University’s Director of Publications & Copy Services.
o In addition, $37,500 and $4,600 was spent on two orders of paper from A&W.
o All purchase orders were signed by University president, Elnora Daniel.
o One of the C6500 units was shipped to Guyana, Africa.
o Mr. Warren has been fired from his $81,252/year job.
o Previously, the University had purchased two fully loaded units from local KMBS dealer, ImageTec, for only $127,000.00 total.
- Motorola is rumored to be an acquisition target. Possible buyers are Dell or HP, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune newspaper.
- Adobe announced that the PDF format is set to become the ISO (International Standards Organization) Standard 32000. The approach leads the format to become the de factor standard for document exchanges across a number of industries worldwide.
- Kodak sponsored the 2007 PIA/GATF Color Management Conference in Phoenix on 12/9-11/2007. This is a seminar on digital color technology for print shop personnel.
- Ricoh, through its InfoPrint division, is the key sponsor for the 2007 CMO Summit in Sonoma, CA. This is a seminar for marketing executives.
- A print quality study conducted by Spencer Labs measured color accuracy of 3 different production color systems:
o Hewlett Packard Indigo Press 5500 (Winner with A- score)
§ Well saturated
§ Vibrant color
§ Excellent sharpness
§ Best optical black density
§ True to life skin tones
o Xerox iGen3 (second place = B-)
§ Lacked depth
§ Lack of saturation
§ Lack of sharpness
§ Skin tones realistic
§ Magenta cast in grays
o Kodak NexPress 2500 (third place = D+)
§ Too much lightness
§ Noticeable greenish-yellow color cast
§ Haze
§ Solid blacks had less density
§ Skin tones were dull and lifeless
§ Significant registration issues
§ Grainy
- Street pricing seen in print-for-pay:
o Xerox DocuColor 260 w/Creo/stapling finisher/LCT = $49,900 with color clicks at $0.0627 and b/w at $0.0135. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Canon imagePRESS C7000VP w/Fiery/LCT/Booklet maker for $195,000.00 with color clicks at $0.07 and b/w clicks at $0.016. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Xerox 4112 w/Fiery/booklet maker for $38,400.00 with clicks at $0.005. 11”x17” billed as one click
o Canon imageRUNNER 7095 w/Fiery/RADF/booklet maker/LCT/PPI for $27,800 with clicks at $0.0042. 11”x17” billed as one click.
- In a survey of printshops that produce direct mail to increase their business, when asked why they should consider offering variable data, conducted by NAPL:
o 23.4% think it will increase overall revenue
o 21.7% think it will increase repeat order size
o 20.7% increase in order size
o 20.5% increase in response rate
- IKON, in an effort to raise money for investment, sold $150 million in 5 year notes.
- The Japan Business Machine and Information Systems Industries Association (JBMIA) announced that:
o Sales of MFPs in Japan declined 3.5% to 148,400 units
o Shipments of color laser MFPs out of Japan rose 30% to 186,000 units
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