Weekend MFP Industry Notes Newsletter
10-18-09
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- A British company introduced the world’s smallest printer. PrintDreams launched a small handheld device, called the PrintBrush, which is moved by hand across a sheet of paper to create an image. It is wireless, and has a small inkjet printing mechanism. To fully image a letter size piece of paper requires moving device back and forth across the page, and from top to bottom.
- In an interview, Canon Vice President, Alan Chng, stated that the company “has intentions” of making a move similar to Xerox in regards to the acquisition of computer services provider, ACS.
- “Definitely, it’s time for us to go into this area” said Chng.
- “At the moment it looks like we’re wide open to options” said Lim Kok Hin, Canon Senior Director & GM.
- Toshiba announced it will start work on a manufacturing plant in Chennai, China to make steam turbines and generators for thermal power plants. Phase 1 of the plant will product turbine blades and expected to be operational by 2011. The building it has leased has 400,000 square feet of space.
- According to Yasuharu Igarashi of Toshiba, the company plans on winning contracts to build 39 nuclear power plants worldwide by 2015.
- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on 10/16/2009, rejected the modified design of a next-generation nuclear reactor from Toshiba because of concerns about structural strength. The decision could pose a setback for Toshiba’s nuclear plans.
- Toshiba agreed to settle a patent infringement lawsuit that was filed against the company by the University of New Mexico regarding the college’s semiconductor manufacturing technology. Unknown how much Toshiba will pay the university in licensing fees.
- Computerworld magazine reported that McCormick & Co. had been hit with the Blaster worm (computer network virus) that was being spread by infected desktop network printers. (brand of printers not named). Other worms that may infect unprotected printers are Sasser and Conficker.
- Another patent infringement lawsuit. U.S. Ethernet Innovations LLC, which has acquired the Ethernet technology patent from 3Com Corp., has sued Apple, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett Packard, Sony and Toshiba for patent infringement.
- Manroland of Germany calls off its merger with Heidelberg of Germany. According to Reuters news service, the merger talks were called off due to poor financial results at Heidelberg. This would have merged the two largest makers of offset printing presses.
- Lexmark announced it signed a 4 year, multi-million dollar managed print services contract with Kingfisher, a global home improvement retail group. The deal includes install of new b/w and color laser MFPs/printers at 330 stores.
- Lexmark recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the launch of their first desktop b/w laser printer. Here is a quick history:
- Lexmark was formed in 1991, when IBM sold off its imaging division to investors
- The name Lexmark came from the fact that IBM had a facility in Lexington, Kentucky that made devices that put marks on paper.
- Current Lexmark, CEO, Paul Curlander, was the product manager for
computer printers
- The division originally focused on making typewriters (Selectric, WheelWriter, etc.)
- In 1981, IBM launched the IBM PC and a dot matrix printer
- In 1969, Gary Starkweather invented first laser printer at Xerox PARC.
- In 1971, Xerox produced first laser printer.
- In 1976, IBM installed its first laser printer, the 3800, a huge floor model, at
F. W. Woolworth’s data center in Milwaukee, WI. Many of these high speed models are still in use today
- In 1984, Hewlett Packard launched the first Laserjet, which was a Canon-made
8ppm model, 300x300dpi, which weighed 75lbs.
- 1985, first IBM laser printer was a table top model, the 3812, selling for $7000 each, and was developed in Boulder, Colorado.
- In 1988, HP launched the first DeskJet inkjet printer.
- Paul Curlander and team of 100 in Lexington, KY were tasked with making small, lightweight, desktop model, which became the IBM 4019 featuring:
- First model able to print on envelopes
- First model to print pages in order
- First test print made at 5:09pm on 4/14/1987 by Harry Cooper
- On 5/6/1987, test unit was printing pages with text and pictures
- Approved for production by Marvin Mann, the first Lexmark CEO
- Original selling price of $2600.00
- Launch date of 10/10/1989
- Sold 100,000 in first year
- Won Product of the Year by PC Magazine
- Toner cartridges are still made and sold for the 4019
- On 10/24/1994, Lexmark launched the Optra series, its first non-IBM labeled printers
- Azerty, a division of United Stationers, announced it has launched “HQueue”, a managed print services program for copier dealers & VARs.
- Xeikon, a division of Punch Graphix of Belgium, announced it has sold a Xeikon 6000 production color system to The Colad Group, a printshop in Buffalo, NY.
- Olympus, which makes high speed color inkjet printers for Riso (ComColor series), is previewing a new product using its own name. The new product (no model# yet), will sell for approximately $400,000, will uses rolls of paper, handle up to 2 million pages per month, and have color click charge of 5 cents for full color. Image quality unknown.
- Xerox is apparently running a promo to increase sales of its Xerox 700 production color system. The promo allows customer to run up to 10,000 color clicks per month, for the first 6 months, and pay only $0.029 per color click, with 11”x17” billed as one click. (a value of $1200)
- Correction from last issue. The founder of ACS received $800 million in stock from Xerox, not $800.
- Xerox now uses three plants that manufacturer polymerized toner, called Xerox EA (aka emulsion aggregate):
- First plant is in Webster, NY plant
- Employs 50
- 100,000 square feet
- $60 million cost to build
- Opened in 9/2007
- Managed by Michael Duggan
- Has sixe 25,000 gallon tanks
- Canada is second plant
- Third plant is in Japan, and owned by Fuji
- Plants that make pulverized toner are in Webster, Brazil, India and the Netherlands
- Xerox stock dump. Blackrock, the giant investment advisor, which has invested tens of millions of its client’s cash in Xerox, has recently sold 20 million shares in the company. The company held 41.7 million shares.
- At the Mortgage Bankers Association 96th Annual Convention in San Diego on 10/11-14/2009, Xerox will show its BlitzDocs software, which allows mortgage companies to manage the entire loan process online. Current customers include American Home Bank, Opes Advisors, Resource Lenders, Shore Mortgage, Trident Group and Uniwest Mortgage Corp.
- Xerox announced it has sold one of its iGen3 production color systems to Printflow, a printshop in London.
- Xerox gave out a “Best of the Best” award for variable data color printing to Cathedral Corporation, a printshop in Rome, NY. The printshop won the award for a campaign it did for St. Mary’s University of San Antonio. The direct mail pieces drove record student response by personalizing by gender, residency, desired course of study and activities.
- Ricoh announced it has placed a Ricoh Aficio PRO C900 production color system at a Sir Speedy printshop in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
- IKON, a division of Ricoh, claims to have 2000 companies under a managed print services contract in the U.S.
- Ricoh announced it will now offer a new embedded software solution for its MFPs, the emFAST FACSys fax server/routing product. Pricing not announced.
- What are expectations for sales reps selling managed print services?(according to ImageSource magazine)
- 20 voice to voice contacts with C-level decision makers should yield:
- 7 appointments, which should yield
- 4 quick-view print environment evaluations, which should yield
- 2 closed MPS contracts
- GreatAmerica Leasing Corp. announced it now has $1 billion in assets, according to CEO, Tony Golobic.
- GE Capital Leasing announced an 87% drop in earnings.
- Fujitsu now shipping the SnapScan fi-6010N desktop scanner featuring:
- large 8.4” color LCD touch screen (like a digital copier)
- scan to email
- scan to folder
- scan to network fax
- scan to FTP
- scan to network printer
- full 101 keyboard
- user can preview, zoom, pan and rotate scanned images
- open source integration capabilities for embedded solutions
- optional software developer kit (SDK)
- 25opm in b/w or color
- Duplex mode scans at 50ipm
- Auto rotate
- Blank page deletion
- Color detection
- Deskew and despeckle
- Page size detection
- Ultrasonic double feed detection
- 50 page document feeder that can handle embossed cards
- Base MSRP of $2999
- More details on the acquisition of eCopy by Nuance:
- Total purchase price was $54 million in stock
- eCopy’s annual revenue was $70 million
- Nuance’s total annual revenue is $1 billion, but its document management software division represents about $80 million per year
- while ad hoc document capture software grew 16% in 2007, it only grew 5.1% in 2008
- eCopy’s growth was 37% in 2006, but this slowed greatly
- eCopy impacted not only by economy, but by the acquisition of IKON by Ricoh,
and Global by Xerox
- These acquisitions have distracted the sales people from software sales.
- eCopy started in late 1990s only working with Canon copiers
- In 2002, Canon purchase 35% of eCopy for $15.8 million
- In 2005, it starting working with Canon’s competitors
- Canon received $19 million in Nuance stock from the acquisition
- eCopy CEO, Ed Schmid, owned 19% of the company
- Ascent Venture Partners owned 17% of eCopy
- eCopy, which used an OCR engine from I.R.I.S. of Belgium, will now use the
OCR engine owned by Nuance
- Canon recently purchased 17% of I.R.I.S.
- Prior to the sale, Nuance had filed a lawsuit against eCopy, I.R.I.S. and ABBY (of Russia), claiming that all three companies were infringing on its OCR engine patent. (this lawsuit may have forced eCopy to sell)
- I.R.I.S. founder and CEO, Pierre De Muelenaere, has filed his own lawsuit
disputing Nuance’s patent.
- Later this month, in San Francisco, a court will hear all the cases.
- Some industry reporters believe that after the lawsuit is settled, Nuance will put the document management division up for sale. According to some, the most likely merger candidate is OmTool, which is headquartered in Massachusetts, just like Nuance Corp.
- Interesting statistics from BEI International about copier service:
- Average number of managed copies/prints per technician is a little over 1 million per month
- Average number of service calls per technician is 66
- Average service call length is 75 minutes
- Average numbers of calls per day, per technician is 3.7
- 4.83% of all copiers working in field are analog
- 60.91% are digital
- only 5.9% are color
- According to IDC, the global computer market is recovering from the poor economy:
- Shipments up 2.3% to 78.1 million units in last quarter
- Hewlett Packard has 20.2%, or 15.7 million units
- Acer of Taiwan has 14%, or 10.9 million units
- Dell Computer shipped 9.9 million units, followed by Lenova of China and Toshiba of Japan
- LaserCare Technologies of Los Angeles, CA announced that it has recycled its 300,000th printer cartridge since it started business 20 years ago, according to president, Paul Wilhelm.
- American TonerServ Corp. of Santa Rosa, CA, is a competitor to LaserCare, and its CEO, Chuck Mache, claims the company is selling more than 1,000 cartridges per day.
- Oce’ announced it sold one of its Oce’ VarioPrint 6250 production monochrome systems to Integrated Book Technology of Dulles, Virginia to produce on-demand books.
- Oce’ announced its production print engines will be used by a company which is printing the world’s first individualized newspapers. InterTi GmbH of Berlin, Germany will be launching “niiu”, which will be based on personalized information from end user’s choice of international news sources, blogs and RSS feeds. They will be using the Oce’ JetStream high speed color inkjet system.
- More details on Oce’s financials:
- 9.9% drop in revenue year over year
- Operating loss of 25 million euros
- Eliminated 1170 employees, towards goal of total reduction of 1500
- Incurred 32 million euro restructuring costs (employee severance packages)
- Sold 7 million euros worth of its internal lease portfolio
- Sold some selected real estate holdings
- Color share of revenue fell from 25% to 24% due to customer reluctance
to print in color
- Wide format revenue down 19%
- IDC released statistics on document management:
- Executives spend 45% of their time working on documents
- 610 billion emails are sent each year
- 50% of all emails are printed
- 7.5 billion documents are created in offices each year
- 1 trillion pages are printed each year
- A former copier rep named Wade Cascini, has formed a company in Seattle, WA named XIPPA, which stands for Xerox, IKON, Pitney, Print & Attorney. The company advertises that it can help companies in the U.S. negotiate lower contracts for copiers, printers or managed print services. There apparently is no upfront charge for the service, instead the company charges a percentage of the savings that is gained as compared to previous end user contract.
- A similar company to XIPPA, is RSource of Boca Raton, FL, run by CEO Larry Reid. He announced that he has just hired former Key Bank executive, Allen Snelling, as President of RSource.
- Sharp announced that it will offer X-Rite’s ColorMunki Design product to allow end users to calibrate their computer monitors and color MFP/printers.
- X-Rite announced that its new CFO is Rajesh Shah, formerly of Cadence Innovation LLC, maker of automotive interiors.
- Scotland Yard detectives are asking retailers in the country to stop selling desktop color laser printers as they are being used to make fake drivers licenses. They claim they have found 30,000 fake cards in the last 18 months that were made on color laser printers.
- Freescale Semiconductor, a spinoff of Motorola, announced it is launching a new processor design to be used in future MFPs. The P1022 will offer:
- Dual core processor with each providing 1GHz of speed, or 2GHz total
- 2GHz revealed 60% faster performance than 1GHz
- Rather than one processor running at 2GHz, two 1GHz is supposedly better due to less power consumption (peak of only 3 watts), and less
heat generation inside the copier
- Designed for color or b/w MFPs running from 30ppm to 50ppm in speed
- Possible buyers are generic print controllers makers including Zoran,
Global Graphics, Pagemark & Peerless.
- A dealer in Minnesota, Marco Inc., announced it has purchased Venture Computer Systems. This expands Marco’s reach into Southern Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. Marco was founded in 1930 as a typewriter dealer. Now it offers IT equipment, MFPs and office furniture with annual sales of $60 million, with CEO, Jeff Gau. Jon Eckhoff was owner of Venture. Purchase price not announced.
- Managed print service software vendor, PrintFleet announced that founder Brian Cosgrove is now Chairman and dCEO, and has hired Chris McFarlane as President.
- According to Synnex CEO, Kevin Murai, 70% of all pages printed never get picked up from the output tray.
- Z Corporation announced it is now shipping the ZPrinter 350, which makes a three dimensional object using lasers cutting a white substance at 0.08 inches per hour. The device sells for $29,500.00.
- InkStop, headquartered in Cleveland, and owns a chain of stores that refill printer cartridges, announced that it will close all 152 locations in the U.S. due to impending bankruptcy.
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