WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
3-16-08
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- In a study of how people use wide format scanning (like that on a KIP 3000 or 5000 model):
o Dedicated service bureau’s average 200,000 scans per year of large format drawings
Big city government office will do 100,000
Medium city will do 50,000
Small city will do 10,000
o In practice, a 6ips scan speed device will only do 7% more than a 3ips speed device due to real world issues with handling of the originals
- Lexmark won a bid for printers and MFPs, along with document management software, at St. Joseph’s Mercy Health Center in Arkansas. It also won similar bids at Memorial Health System in Springfield, IL and at Health First in Florida.
- Lexmark launched the new C780n color laser printer offering:
o Weighs 105lbs.
o Base MSRP $899
o 31ppm color speed
o 4 tandem drum design
o Letter/legal size paper only
o 120K/month maximum duty cycle (based on b/w pages)
o 500 sheet input tray standard
o 100 sheet stack bypass
o Optional second 500 sheet drawer
o Optional auto duplex
o Black toner yield of 10,000 pages (based on 5% coverage) sells for $154.00
o Color toners (yellow, magenta or cyan) have yield of 10,000 pages (based on 5%) and sell for $289.00 each
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include supplies
o According to PC World magazine:
“worse than average reliability rating”
“letters looked slightly thick and chunky”
“colors were looked a little oversaturated”
(not 8 bits per pixel)
- Now that the U.S. Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 was signed into law, this will help boost sales of MFPs. Here is excerpt from the new law:
o “The agreement would also offer incentives to spur business investment. The agreement would save businesses approximately $50 billion in near-term taxes through a temporary change to the tax code that will allow American businesses that buy new equipment this year to deduct an additional 50 percent of the cost of their investment in 2008. This will encourage businesses to expand and create new jobs now because buying equipment, software, and tangible property this year will dramatically lower their taxes. The agreement also increases expensing for small businesses.”
- According to MarketWatch, while PC sales have increased 14%, printer sales only rose 3%. This may be due to customers who are using their old printers with their new computers, as they feel no need for more features or speed with a new printer or MFP model.
- Advanced Office Solutions, a Canon/Savin dealer in North Dakota, purchased Advanced Business Methods (ABM), which has offices in Bismark, Dickinson and Minot.
- A New Castle, NH organist is suing Fedex Kinkos. Terrie Harmon claims she brought is some old, rare music books to be spiral bound, left the country, came back late to pick them up, and was told by clerk that they were destroyed.
- PODi (Print On Demand Initiative) announced its 2008 Best Practice winners to those that use variable data digital color:
o Align Technology reduced their outsourcing expense by $380,000 by creating an in-house web to print on demand system for product brochures.
o Broadridge Financial Systems increased its sales by 6.5% by using a variable data direct mail campaign.
o Alphagraphics of Billings, Montana received a 37% response rate from a variable data direct mail campaign.
- Interesting comments made by Benny Landa, former owner of Indigo, which is now a division of Hewlett Packard:
o Mr. Landa, originally an employee of Savin, before it was purchased by Ricoh, started Indigo in Israel, using liquid toner to produce high speed digital color. He sold it to HP in 2001 for $800 million
o “By next DRUPA show in 2012, HP will be the largest graphic arts company in the industry. You will say – Nobody can catch them now”
o Stephen Nigro, Senior VP of HP, confirmed HP’s intention to become number one in digital graphic arts, Claims by 2009, 53 trillion documents will be printed, of which 9% will be digital
o Alon Bar-Shany, VP & GM of Indigo division, forecasted a tenfold increase to 100 billion pages in volume on Indigo product
- Hewlett Packard announced the new HP Indigo 7000 offering:
o Uses liquid toner called “ElectroInk”
o Seven colors total (CMYK plus three spot colors)
o 13.4” maximum paper width, using rolls of paper (rollfed)
o Top speed of 240ppm of letter size images
o Optional Pantone GEO color simulation for $280.00
- Hewlett Packard announced a new in-line UV coating option for its Indigo 5500 production color system.
- Hewlett Packard announced the new HP Inkjet Web Press featuring:
o 30” maximum paper width
o Top speed of 2600 letter size pages per hour, full color (400 feet per minute using rolls of paper)
o Base MSRP of $2,500,000.00
o HP stated that a page with 30% total color ink coverage will cost only one penny per page in ink cost
o B/W pages will supposedly cost $0.0015 in ink cost
o 600x600dpi (8 bit?)
o “image looks somewhat flat compared with sheet fed digital printers” – industry expert stated
o Uses pigmented inks
o Also applies a binder solution
o Uses technology found in current Edgeline CM8060 product
Uses total of 7 inkjet printheads per color across width of press
Ink is channeled to printheads from large capacity containers on press
Called Scalable Printing Technology (SPT)
o Uses twin inkjet printhead engine for auto duplex
o Will launch in 7/2009
o Will compete against the Kodak Versamark VX5000 which has 20” wide paper path, runs at 500 feet per minute, and sells for $5,000,000.00 (IBM InfoPrint 5000 and Xerox 980 sells for $3,000,000.00 each)
- Kodak claims to have sold 500,000 desktop color inkjet printers in 2007. According to HP, this is 1% of the total, while 46% of the units sold were from HP.
- Kodak placed a NexPress S3000 production color system at Craftline Printing of Indiana.
- Canon won a bid to install 48 MFPs at Hibernian Insurance in Ireland, on a $530,000 contract.
- Okidata’s C6100n desktop color LED printer received some poor marks in a review in PC magazine:
o “little expensive considering its shortcomings in usability and print quality”
o “printer’s toner has a shiny look that some people might find distracting”
o “graphics displayed multiple problems”
o “photos exhibited noticeable noire’ patterns and oversaturated or excessively dark colors”
o “flesh toners looked orangey”
o (the C6100n uses a wax based toner, and does not offer 8 bits per pixel)
- Xerox launched the DocuPrint 1050 featuring:
o Advertised as offering 1000ppm top speed b/w
o It actually two DocuPrint 525 (500ppm) devices bundled together
o Uses rolls of paper (rollfed)
o 600x600dpi
o Pricing not announced
- Xerox sold an iGen3 110 production color system to Perspektiv Direct, a print shop in Nottingham, England.
- A school district in Laredo, TX is being audited for possible issues with two copier contracts. The existing Laredo Independent School District contract, through Dahill Industries, supposedly was overpaid, and led to the dismissal of school CFO,Jesus Amezcua, who is now on paid leave during the investigation. Also under review is the new 36 month lease with Xerox
- Ricoh now shipping the Aficio C222DN color laser printer offering:
o Letter/legal size only
o 16ppm top speed
o 4 tandem drum design
o No LCD control panel
o 250 sheet input tray
o Optional 500 sheet tray
o Black toner yield of 2,000 pages based on 5% coverage, sells for $55.00 each
o Color toners (cyan, magenta or yellow) have yield of 2,000 pages each, based on 5%, and sell for $100.00 each
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include supplies
o PC World magazine test results:
o “text looked dark”
o “graphics printed on plain paper suffered from a slightly faded look, as well as graininess or moire’ patterns”
- Ricoh launched several new mid-market b/w MFPs, the Aficio MP2550 & MP3350 series offering:
o replace the MP2510 and MP 3010 models
o 25ppm and 33ppm top speed respectively
o While they only print in b/w, they both can scan in color
o Optional fax board
o Optional 50 sheet document feeder with top speed of 50ipm
o 256MB RAM standard, upgradeable to 768MB RAM
o Optional 40GB hard drive
o 600x600dpi (advertised as 2400dpi with interpolation)
o Up to 11”x17” paper handling
o Full color LCD touch screen control panel
o 14 second warm up time
o 4.5 second first copy out time
o Comes standard with two 500 sheet drawers and 100 sheet bypass
o Can add either two more 500 sheet drawers, or a 2,000 letter sheet paper deck
o Up to 105gsm in paper drawers or the automatic duplex
o Up to 157gsm in the bypass
o Optional print controller with 533MHz RISC processor
10/100BaseT & USB ports
Optional 1000BaseT(gigabit) or Bluetooth
HP PCL emulation standard
Optional PostScript
Optional scanning for b/w and color
o Optional stapling finisher, booklet finisher, and hole-punch
o Optional hard drive security kit
o Base MSRP for MP2550 of $5085.00 and $6435.00 for MP3350
- Street pricing seen in the print for pay market:
o Xerox DocuColor 5000 w/Fiery/stacker/paper feeder for $127,600.00. Color click are $0.063 for first 30,000, then $0.049 thereafter. Single click 11”x17”
o Xerox DocuColor 242 w/Fiery for $26,000.00, with color clicks at $0.059 each, and b/w for $0.0129. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Ricoh Aficio 3260C w/Fiery/booklet maker/hole-punch for $21,000.00 with color clicks at $0.06 and b/w at $0.011.
o Xerox 4112 w/Fiery/booklet maker/LCT for $43,500.00 with b/w clicks at $0.0052. 11”x17” billed as one click.
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