WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
10-21-07
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- Canon announced that it has sold two imagePRESS C7000VP production color systems to KB Graphics of Bristol, England, to replace a Xerox DocuColor 5252 and DocuColor 5000. Also included was Objectif Lune PlanetPress variable data software and EFI Digital StoreFront web-based print job submission.
- Sanyo, which at one time manufactured a line of copiers and fax machines, announced it would not sell its semiconductor business. The company is struggling to return to profits after three straight years of red ink. It is currently considering selling its cell phone division to Kyocera.
- Some industry analysts are predicting that Hewlett Packard will purchase Kodak, to become an imaging powerhouse. Kodak’s current market capitalization is $7.84 billion. Hewlett Packard’s is $130 billion.
- Hewlett Packard announced it is retooling its liquid toner plants, which are called “ElectroInk”, for the Indigo production color systems. The new modifications will allow them to reduce electricity used in manufacturing by 40%. The plants in question are in Rhovot & Kiryat, Israel, as well as Singapore.
- Reuters is reporting that Dell Computer is considering buying Lexmark. Dell has struggled to become successful in the printer market on its own.
- Big management changes at Ricoh. Tom Salierno, former head of Ricoh Americas is out. CEO, Nori Goto, will now take on duties of President. Also, Mr. Goto stated:
o Position of Chief Operating Officer is eliminated
o Martin Brodigan of Ricoh Canada, is moving to West Caldwell, NJ to become new CF), reporting to Mr. Goto
o The Direct Marketing and Indirect Marketing groups will consolidate into one, reporting to Hugh Urabe, Senior VP, who reports to Mr. Goto.
o Reason given for changes was “to flatten the organizational structure, eliminate certain redundancies and to be more cohesive and responsive in the future”
o Ricoh announced that while sales increased in Europe by 29.4%, the U.S. only saw 2.5% growth
- In an interview with the press, Carl Joachim, VP Marketing for Ricoh’s Production Printing Business Group, stated that the new Ricoh production color device to launch in 2009 offers:
o Code-named; “Future Color”
o Top speed of 90ppm full color
o 4 tandem OPC drum design
o Designed by employees of the printer division acquired from Hitachi
o Will use paper drawers and finishing options from the MP1350 b/w system
o Will be sold by Ricoh branches and “select dealers”
- Kodak announced that Mary Jane Hellyar is not Executive VP and Jeff Hayzlett is VP.
- Samsung of Korea is launching a new desktop color laser printer, the CLP-611NDK offering:
o 4 tandem OPC drum design
o 20ppm top speed color or b/w
o Auto duplex
o Letter/legal size paper only
o 5500 page black toner yield based on 5% coverage per page
o 5000 page color toner yield per cartridge based on 5%
o 850 sheet paper tray
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include supplies which must be purchased separately
- Source Technologies, which takes laser printers/MFPs from other vendors and redesigns them to run MICR toner, is now offering paper drawers that have locks on them. As you know, the most popular reason for using magnetic MICR toner is to print checks. However, some customers were concerned about leaving black check stock in the printers with out controlled access. For more info visit www.sourcetech. Com
- Kodak stated the following regarding color printing done by manufacturers in the U.S.:
o Spend $17.8 billion per year on print
o Types of print:
§ Periodicals
§ Newspapers
§ Books
§ Catalogs
§ Directories
§ Technical documents
§ Direct mail
· 4% postcards
· 24% self-mailers
· 38% brochures
· 32% letter solicitations
· 2% correspondence
§ Ad collateral
· 26% flyers
· 28% folders
· 28% saddle stitched brochures
· 18% perfect bound/glue bound booklets
§ Financial and legal documents
§ Stationery
§ Internal forms
§ Packaging
o 87% of print now is offset, and only 11% is digital
- The Financial Times conducted a survey of 600 CFO/CEO/COO executives and found:
o 59% trust print instead of viewing on-line
o 64% pay more attention to print ads versus on-line/e-mail
o 60% choose print for in-depth analysis
o 73% stated that print would never become obsolete
- ABSA Bank of Europe ordered 4,000 printers from Okidata.
- Zebra is now shipping a new desktop dye sublimation color printer, called the F680, that prints a 5”x7” photo in 19 seconds. Rather than laser technology, these printers use a very expensive ribbon, and special photo paper to create high gloss images with no borders. However, besides the slow speed, the cost per print for supplies is just under a dollar.
- Looking to test your knowledge of Color Management? The Color Management Group now offers an intensive on-line exam at www.colormanagement.com
- Recent survey of print shop who claim that they are in market for a production color system:
o Of 7,575 shops, 1,310 said that they are in market:
§ Less than 10 employees = 69%
§ 10-49 employees = 24%
§ 50-99 employees = 3%
§ 100-249 employees = 3%
§ 250 or more employees = 1%
- Adobe announced it would soon ship a fix for Photoshop CS3 to answer complaints about the printing from Windows, with issues in the print dialog box.
- Printable Technologies announced version 5.0 of its popular FusionPro variable data software now offering:
o Variable text on a curve
o Soft drop shadow effects on variable text
o PPML format support
o MSRP of $599
- In a study conducted by Fujitsu, it found:
o 9 trillion pages are viewed on computer screens each year
o 2.8 trillion pages are printed each year and growing
o Office workers discard 45% of what they print
o Average is 22 pages per day per worker
o 53% admit to printing same document several times by mistake
o 43% admit to picking up someone else’s prints
o 8% admit to printing out e-mails to read them
o 47% say they are careful to print only when necessary
o 23% admit to not giving much thought about what they print
o 13% admit they don’t worry about how much they print because they put it in recycle bin
o 64% say that their companies do not have a printing policy
o 33% said they would reduce the amount they print if the company implemented a policy
o 75% said they have cleared paper jams on their own
o 62% said they have changed toner on their own
o 36% say that they ask for help for jams and toner change
o 44% say that they call the company’s computer help desk about their printers/MFPs
o 23% percent admit to just walking away when they jam the printer or MFP or discover some other issue that needs attention
- MWA Intelligence Inc. of Scottsdale, AZ, maker of MFP management tools, is partnering with PCS Print Control Software of England to produce a bundled package to manage and control usage tracking of MFPs and printers.
- Gerber Scientific announced a new wide format inkjet color printer, the Solara Ion, that can print on a 1” thick board, up to 5 feet wide and 10 feet long.
- The Bethel School District of Oregon announced that it would use $1 million set originally set aside to buy new copiers, to pay for teacher’s raises to end a three day strike. It has 77 copiers that are 5 years old.
- More details on management shakeups in Toshiba’s & Canon‘s branch organization:
o Craig Wiegman was let go as president of the Toshiba California and Nevada locations
o Replaced by Bill Michas, who was formerly Director of Sales for Canon branches in southern California
o Bill Joseph, formerly VP of Marketing for Canon, now in charge of the “Paragon” division, which are the start from scratch Canon branches in the West (AZ, TX, NV, etc.)
o Established Canon branches, who formerly reported to Bill Michas, now report to the person in charge of Canon’s east coast branches, Mr. Dennis Uhniat.
- Canon interviewed 3,000 workers and asked them what frustrates them most:
o Long and pointless meetings was number one (aka “admin agony”)
o Paper jams
o Long copier/MFP warmup times
- Tektronix of Wilsonville, Oregon, is slowly being dismantled as parts are sold off:
o Originally started by Howard Vollum and Jack Murdock and made test and measuring equipment (like oscilloscopes)
o Xerox bought the Xerox Phaser printer division in 1999 for $925 million, which was originally started to print out the color images from their oscilloscopes
o Tom Bruggere, Gerry Langeler & David Moffenbeier left to form Mentor Graphics Corp., an electronic design software company
o TriQuint Semiconductor Inc., maker of gallium arsenide semiconductors was formerly a Tektronix lab.
o Jim Hurd, Chirs King and John Laney left to start Planar Systems, a maker of computer display/projector systems. This was then broken out into InFocus Corp, Clarity Visual Systems Inc., and Pixelworks Inc.
o Debi Coleman, originally from Apple Computer, left to start Merix Corp., a circuit board maker.
o Norm Winningstad left to start Floating Point Systems, and Barco Medical Systems
o The remaining company was just purchased by Danaher Corp. for $2.8 billion.
- Xerox is now shipping an optional external EFI Fiery print controller for its 4112 and 4127 production b/w MFPs.
- Konica Minolta introduced, through its Instrumentation division, the CS-2000 spectrophotometer with the world’s best performance, capable of measuring down to luminance of 0.003cd/m2.
- Toshiba now offering BlackBall’s Re-Search data management solution software as an option for its MFPs.
- Canon announced it would replace a CLC-5100 color copier with fuser oil at National Assembly of Wales with a new dry toner imagePRESS C7000VP production color system.
- More info on the new Oce’ ColorStream 10000 production color system:
o Top speed of 172ppm full color and 852ppm b/w
o Uses rolls of paper only
o 5 million page per month duty cycle
o 600x600dpi with 4 bits per pixel bit depth
o Paper widths from 6.5” to 19”
o Supports onion skin, newspaper, coated, uncoated, heavy and glossy media
o Will not ship until late 2008
o Oce’ provided this info very early to offset the anticipated launch of a similar product from Xerox
- According to an article in The Nikkei, a Japanese publication, Konica Minolta in Japan will launch a new commercial-use inkjet printer: (Nassenger series)
o Speed of 30 meters per minute
o MSRP of around $80,000.00
o Sales target of 200 units in first year
o Revenue target of around $86 million in three years
o Products aimed at label printing market
- Sharp announced it would offer MWAi device management tracking solutions.
- Toshiba announced it would launch two new desktop b/w MFPs. Toshiba is buying the products from Lexmark, but these use b/w laser engines made by Fuji (who makes most Xerox products). The new models are the eSTUDIO 450s and 500s offering:
o Letter/legal only
o Scan/copy/print/fax
o Base MSRPs of $1499 and $2999
o 450s offers 45ppm
o 500s offer 50ppm
o Scan speed of 35opm
o 600x600dpi copy, 1200x120dpi print
o 50 sheet document feeder
o PCL and PostScript print drivers
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include supplies which must be purchased separately
- Xerox announced last quarter’s financials:
o Total revenue grew 12% to $4.3 billion
o 11% growth in service/supply revenue
o 39% of revenue was from color printers and MFPs, up 3%
o Net income of $254 million versus $536 million last year
o Stock share price reacted to the news by dropping 1.3% to $16.98
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