Weekend MFP Industry Notes Newsletter
10-11-09
- One solutions vendor buys another. Visionet Systems, a business process outsourcing firm in Cranbury, NJ, announced it has acquired eDoc Synergy of Chesterfield, MO. eDoc was founded by Affan Waheed, a former employee of Express Scripts, and provided a service to digitize medical records.
- Microsoft is set to launch Windows 7 operating system on 10/22/09. According to IDC’s Director of Vertical Industry Practice, Mark Walker stated; “The operating system is meaner and cleaner than its predecessor. It has gone back to the first principals.’
- The falling value of the US Dollar continues to pummel the MFP industry. For example, Zacks Investment Research said the following about Canon; “We believe the sharp appreciation of the yen is eroding Canon Inc’s revenue and profits. The company expects to improve profitability through product launches and cost-cutting efforts. We expect revenue in 2009 to be hurt by weak consumer spending and worsening global economy and believe the company will struggle to meet expectations in fiscal 2009. We maintain our SELL recommendation on Canon shares.”
- More information on the new Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE C7000/C9000 series of color MFPs:
- the Canon Advanced imageCHIP system, which runs the MFP, actually consists of:
- Main board which works with the scanner to adjust image size, and process the image
- Accelerator board controls the user interface and controls network connectivity
- Riser board connects other two boards together
- 2GB RAM standard with 80GB hard drive
- When the device feels it needs more toner, it unlocks the door to expose the toner. If end user wants to change the toner, and door is not unlocked, end user must go into the control panel and search for an unlock mode in the Settings/Registration menu
- The new Canon pQ toner does not need fuser oil, and replaces the previous “S” toner and “V” toner used in other models
- The waste toner cartridge is replaced on by a service technician and not by customer
- Every 100 pages, the “Real Time Calibration” is activated to improve consistency of image quality
- Unlike other Canon models, these new models have a paper size sensor in the drawers
- Paper drawers, however, still have a push button that has to be activated in order to open drawers
- There are no screening or gloss optimization controls
- Back to front registration is rated at +/- 1.0 millimeter
- Standard generic print controller does not come with either PCL or PostScript print drivers, as these are expensive options. Also need to add 512MB RAM for PS driver.
- Other print controller options are EFI Fiery & MicroPress
- Maximum paper size is 13”x19”
- Can handle up to 300gsm
- Unit slows down when printing on thick media
- Maximum duplex paper weight is 220gsm (this is only 80lb. cover)
- Does not have paper decurling function
- No perfect bind option
- Optional booklet maker can only stitch up to 20 sheets of paper
- The capacity of the output tray is only 25 booklets
- If customer has installed the Professional Puncher, Paper Folding Unit or Paper Deck A1, Canon recommends that a space of 39.4” between back of unit and wall for technician access
- Sharp won a bid to place 336 solar modules on the roof of the Museum of Latin America in Long Beach, CA. Purchase price not announced, but the museum estimates it may save up to $6000 per year in electricity bills, based on available sunlight.
- In an unusual effort to increase sales, Riso is running ads for its new high speed color inkjet systems in a electric utility’s website. The eCatalog is from BC Hydro, a large electric utility in Canada.
- Offset press maker, Heidelberg of Germany, announced it will cut an additional 1500 jobs to boost profitability.
- DocuForce, a dealer in Kansas, won a copier bid from Butler County for color and b/w models. Total revenue not announced.
- Buyers Labs Inc. (BLI) gave a 5 Star rating to PrintAudit 6, a rules based managed print services software package.
- Document management use in healthcare can help avoid costs in an audit of Medicare payments. Since the government started their audits (called RACs), in just 5 pilot stated, $993 million in Medicare overpayments has already been recouped. The RACs expand to all states in 2010, and supposedly require 5 times as much research as a traditional audit.
- A federal judge in Texas has dismissed Hewlett Packard & Lenovo from an inventor’s lawsuit accusing them of infringing on a patent related to modems used in the company’s computer product line.
- Gary Peterson of Gap Intelligence offered an opinion on the future of Hewlett Packard’s printer business; “the printing industry is a mature one, and there is a movement within HP to use IPG’s 18.5 percent profit margin not to grow the printing segment, but move it into IT services where IBM dominates…”
- Hewlett Packard is apparently considering making another acquisition, after is just swallowed EDS for $13 billion. Industry authors believe the company will buy Brocade Communications Systems Inc., which makes routers and switches for blade computer servers, as well as software. Some analysts place Brocade’s value at $4 billion.
- A judge in New York granted Xerox’s motion to dismiss an antitrust claim made against the company. Media Sciences, maker of generic printer supplies for Xerox printers, was trying to establish that Xerox maintained an unfair monopoly on the market for cartridges & ink for its printers. Xerox is still suing Media Sciences for patent infringement.
- Xerox announced it will license software from Preo Software Inc. of Alberta, Calgary, Canada. The software supposedly will allow end users to measure their color coverage on their documents that they plan on printing to their new Xerox ColorQube color wax copier. In theory, this would allow users to know upfront what their cost per click would be before they actually print the page, and get billed by Xerox.
- Xerox’s ACS division announced it won a $4 million contract from the State of Wyoming to develop an electronic health record and health information exchange portal.
- ACS, a division of Xerox, also announced it won a bid to provide employee benefits administration from Ford Motor Company. Terms and revenue not announced.
- In order to be named the “Official Copier of the Olympics”, Xerox used to pay $50 million per year to the International Olympic Committee.
- The Association of Retired Xerox Employees (ARXE) claim that 25% of its members (8,000 of 33,000) will be affected by the elimination of supplemental health care coverage provided by Xerox. The group, led by David Coriale, filed a lawsuit in Rochester federal court to try and force Xerox to reinstate the benefits.
- Xerox launched CategoriX software, which will supposedly automatically classify documents for the legal vertical market. Pricing not announced.
- Xerox also plans on launching a program to provide managed print services in the cloud. “The managed print services in the cloud will be targeted at mid-market companies having a sizeable number of imaging and printing devices. The services will be offered on per-device, per-month basis.” Said Princy Bhatnagar, a Director in Xerox’s Office Business Group.
- More details emerge about the former owner of ACS, which Xerox bought last week for $6.4 billion:
- Name is Darwin Deason, and is 69 years old
- Will receive $800 in cash and stock due to buyout
- Originally from Arkansas
- First job was a mail boy at Gulf Oil Corp.
- Owns a 118 foot yacht, the Cartoush II.
- Has been married 5 times
- According to author, Tim Rogers, he once threatened to kill his personal chef
- Started the first ATM network in Texas
- Another story of technology that originated from Xerox’s former famed Palo Alto Research Center (PARC):
- Andreas Bechtolsheim, after winning a national physics Science Fair prize in Germany, came to Silicon Valley (California) to take a summer job at Intel.
- His mentor was relocated to Oregon on the day he arrived.
- Rather than leave, Andreas stayed and went to Stanford University to pursue his PhD.
- Part of his work led him to a visit to PARC, where he say the Alto computer prototype (which inspired Steve Jobs to launch the Macintosh computer)
- Inspired by what he saw, Andreas, in 1981, developed a computer workstation of his own.
- He tried to license the design to others when fellow Stanford grad, Vinod Khosla, attempted to convince him that they could make their own computers rather than licensing the technology to others.
- They went to a small computer maker named Onyx, which was run by another Stanford grad named Scott McNealy.
- They then recruited Bill Joy from University of Berkeley, and founded Sun Microsystems.
- Xerox announced that it placed one of its Xerox 495 Continuous Feed Duplex Printers (500ppm) in Barton & Cooney, a printshop in Burlington, NJ. It will produce 60 million impressions per year.
- Ricoh announced it won a bid from AREVA Inc. AREVA is a nuclear power equipment maker, with facilities in 43 countries. Details of the contract were not announced.
- Ricoh announced it now has a special discount pricing program for members of NAPL/NAQP, allowing it to increase its sales of production print systems to printshops in the U.S.
- Ricoh announced it sold another Ricoh Aficio PRO C900 production color system. This time it placed a unit at Grover Printing, a Consolidated Graphics printshop in Houston, Texas.
- In Japan, Ricoh launched the “Pretend You Are a Copier” program, which enables children to experience 6 copier processes through experiments.
- Is getting rid of all paper files a good idea? The U.S. National Archives announced that based on its testing, CD/DVD experiential life expectancy is only 2 to 5 years, even though published data life expectancy is often cited as 25 years or longer. Why is this? The dyes that record data in the CD/DVD material can be impacted by the environment, and lose their data. The phenomenon is called “Bit Rot”.
- The City of Denver’s faulty printer allows drunk worker to keep his job. Apparently John Delgado, who was caught drinking on the job, could not be fired when the printer attached to the Breathalyzer machine failed to print out the test results.
- Lexmark now shipping the T656dne, which is an A4 b/w desktop b/w laser printer, with a 7” touch screen color LCD, and 55ppm for $1999.00.
- Lexmark won a managed print services bid from RC McLean & Associates, which is a medical practice management company that provides billing and other professional services to anesthesiologists and other medical specialists across the U.S. Lexmark claims the contract will save RCM over $120,000 per year.
- Statistics from Lexmark on healthcare industry in the U.S.:
- $7 billion per year is spent on processing insurance claims
- Average cost for a medical practice to process an insurance claim is $10-$15 per claim
- Turnaround time for claim is 30-90 days
- Paper claims take average of 35 minutes to process
- Paper claims are rejected 30-35% of the time
- Only 1% of electronically filed claims are rejected
- Another use for inkjet printers. Students at UC Berkeley have invented a way to grow biological cell cultures, but squirting glucose using inkjet heads in a low cost printer, into grooves dug into CD-ROMS that contain the cells. They are hoping to perfect this technology to offer an alternative to normal $30,000 systems that labs have to acquire to do the same thing.
- Toshiba was notified that it will be fined the European Union over claims that it conspired to fix pricing of electric power transformers.
- Toshiba previewed a new high definition television, called the Cell Regza, which is a 55” flat screen model that displays 8 different channels at the same time in 8 windows on screen. It uses the same computer that is in a Sony PlayStation video game. It can also record all 8 channels nonstop for 26 hours on an internal hard drive. Suggested MSRP of $11,000.00.
- Toshiba announced it has implemented Web Content Management software from Autonomy Corp. for its office equipment website for dealers and end users. Unknown the cost of the contract.
- Nuance Communications, of Burlington, MA, announced it has purchased eCopy Corp., of Nashua, New Hampshire, for $54 million. (One would guess that new eCopy products would now use Nuance’s Omnipage OCR engine now, instead of IRIS)
- In another acquisition of a computer network services company, Emerson Electric Co. announced it had purchased Avocent Corp. for $1.2 billion.
- Another example; Sykes Enterprises of Tampa, FL, paid $263 million for ICT Group of Newtown, PA. ICT Group provides services to contact centers in the U.S.
- Street pricing seen in the print for pay market:
- Xerox DocuColor 252 w/Fiery for $22,000 with b/w clicks at $0.0129 and color clicks @ $0.049. 11”x17” billed as one click.
- Ricoh Aficio PRO 907EX w/Fiery/bookletmaker/stapling finisher for $32,800 with b/w clicks @ $0.0048. 11”x17” billed as one click.
- InnerWorkings Inc. of Chicago, IL, announced it won a managed print services bid from InterContinental Hotels Group. This is apparently a mulit-million dollar contract.
- The Graphic Arts Show Company announced that the total attendance for PRINT 09 was 18,999, not including vendors.
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