WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
9-30-07
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- Xaar of Sweden has introduced a new high speed color inkjet print head that it t hopes will be used by printer manufacturers to make production print devices. It claims:
o Called the Xaar 1000 Side Shooter Technology
o Top speed of 10,000 pages per hour (at low resolution)
o Is capable of delivering graphics quality
o Has 70mm width per head, and recommends positioning 7 heads to cover width of tabloid page production.
o Pumps the ink sideways through the head to prevent clogging
o For more info, see flash vide at http://www.xaar.com/product_det.asp?art_id=5025&sec_id=2546
- Kodak announced the departure of James Langley, who was President of the Graphic Communications Group, which included the Creo print controllers, the DigiMaster production b/w devices and NexPress production color devices. Replacing him is Philip J. Faraci, formerly of the Kodak film division.
- Kodak now claims to have 500 of the NexPress production color systems installed worldwide. As you may recall, this product was originally a joint venture between Kodak & Heidelberg, with an investment from DANKA, with first prototype shown in year 2000 at DRUPA show in Germany. This engine has:
o LED technology instead of laser
o True 8 bit per pixel imaging by dimming the LEDs
o 600x600dpi
o Uses polymerized toner technology with no fuser oil
o Can apply clear toner, and with use of off-line device, called NexGlosser, can provide a high gloss finish
o Claims to offer the largest color gamut of any toner device (widest range of colors)
o Claims to match 80% of Pantone colors
o Handles maximum paper weight of 350gsm (130lb. cover)
o NexPress S3000, which offers 100ppm top speed, has a fully loaded MSRP of $612,000.00
o Those who own NexPress 2500 can upgrade to S3000 model for $70,000.00
- According to The Industry Measure, 32% of printshops in U.S. plan on buying new equipment in next 12 months.
- Survey of printshops about selling digital versus offset yielded these responses:
o 45% cite “getting new business/growing sales” as the top business challenge
o 12% stated that they are concerned about capability of their marketing personnel
o 38% feel that selling programs rather than one-off jobs are the top sales opportunity
o Only 6% feel that they need to change their sales reps’ compensation program to push digital
- Toshiba announced that it will resell KIP wide format printers and MFPs. This includes all Toshiba factory-direct branches as well as Toshiba dealers.
- The Motley Fool investing website gave its “Worst Performer” award to DANKA. The company’s market capitalization in 1997 was $2.1 billion, and now is $55 million.
- Canon announced it will close its copier manufacturing plant in Germany and relocate the equipment to plants in China.
- InfoTrends believes that Xerox branded engines produce 50% of all pages created by production color devices.
- Xerox announced it has sold an iGen3 production color system to Transcontinental Direct, a direct mail print shop in Warminster, PA.
- Xerox introduced two new color laser MFPs, the WorkCentre 7232 and 7242 offering:
o Actually made by Fuji Film of Japan
o Polymerized toner technology with no fuser oil (called Xerox EA-HG toner)
o OPC organic photoconductor drum technology
o Top speed of only 10cpm full color
o 7232 offers 32ppm b/w and 7242 offer 42ppm b/w
o Base MSRPs of $5299 and $6299
o 7232 has 100K/month max duty cycle, while 7242 offers 125K/month (based on b/w output)
o 600x600dpi
o 4 bit per pixel technology (maximum of 16 shades of color)
o 6 second first b/w copy out time, 15 seconds for color
o Automatic duplexing standard
o Banner printing mode
o Account tracking/control via “Auditron” feature standard
o Product usage tracking via “Standard Accounting” software standard
o Built-in generic print controller
§ Most likely made by Marvell Technology
§ 10/100BaseT, USB ports
§ HP PCL emulation standard
§ Optional PostScript (approx $1000)
§ 667MHz processor
§ 40GB hard drive
§ 1.2GB RAM
§ Optional Data Security Kit
§ Optional scan to e-mail/FTP/folder/LDAP (approx $1000)
§ Scan speed of 40opm b/w and 13opm color at 200dpi
o Optional fax board (approx $1000)
o Up to 11”x17” paper handling
o Comes standard with 100 sheet stack bypass
o Holds up to 216gsm paper weight in any paper source
o Comes standard with one 520 sheet paper drawer
o Paper supply options include:
§ Two more 520 sheet drawers
§ Deck with 900 sheet and 1200 sheet drawer, only holds letter size paper in portrait direction
§ Deck with 2000 sheet capacity, and is mounted on side, holds letter size only
§ Plain copier stand
o Optional 75 sheet automatic document feeder
o Optional 50 sheet stapling finisher that fits in middle of copier for small footprint
o Optional 50 sheet staple and hole-punching finisher that mounts on the side
o Optional service/supply contracts force end user to change out 11 different consumable items rather than call technician
- Xerox launched a new desktop color printer that is advertised as offering a color cost per page the same as the average b/w laser printer. Details:
o Called the Phaser 8860
o Is NOT a laser and does NOT use toner, instead uses hot melted wax instead, called “Solid Ink” technology.
o This technology came form the $950 million acquisition of Tektronix in 1999
o Cost of color supplies per page ranges from 3 cents to 18 cents depending on coverage.
o Prints on letter and legal size paper only
o Top speed of 30ppm b/w or color (in low quality mode)
o Base MSRP of $2499.00
§ The same model is available as the Phaser 8560 for $699, but customer must use much more expensive wax sticks (8560 color wax is $92.99 for 3400 pages, but 8860 is $71.99 for 14,000 pages). Xerox claims that the end user will need to print 31,383 color pages before the wax stick savings make up for the extra up front cost of buying the 8860 versus 8560.
o Built-in print controller
§ 10/100BaseT & USB ports
§ 120K/month max duty cycle
§ HP PCL and PostScript
§ 256MB RAM standard (can upgrade to 1GB for $1438)
§ Optional 40GB hard drive for $499
§ 750MHz processor
o Supplies are formed chunks of wax placed in holes at top of printer (similar to oddly shaped crayons)
§ Wax chunks fall into an iron tub, which heats the wax to a hot liquid
§ Hot liquid wax is then squirted onto a drum
§ Drum rolls over the paper, transferring the liquid wax
§ Wax cools, returning to solid, and page exits the printer
§ If engine is turned off, or if nozzles clog, there is up to a 12.5 minute delay to cycle the printer
§ Color wax sticks have yield of 14,000 pages based on 5% coverage and sell for $71.99 each
§ If printer is bumped or jostled, hot liquid wax can splash out from iron holding tanks and damage the inside of the printer
o Automatic duplex standard
o 5 second first color page out time (after long warmup)
o 600dpi (advertised as offering 2400dpi like quality)
o Comes standard with 525 sheet paper drawer and 100 sheet stack bypass
o Option can add 1000 sheet paper supply for $798
o Optional extended warranties do NOT includes supplies
- Xerox will also launch a desktop color MFP based on the Phaser 8860, called the Phaser 8860MFP. All same features of Phaser 8860 plus:
o 50 sheet automatic document feeder
o Scan to TWAIN/folder/e-mail/FTP
o Fax board standard
o Base MSRP of $3999
o Also available as the Phaser 8560MFP for only $1499, but end user must use much more expensive color wax sticks.
o Optional extended warranties do NOT includes supplies
- Have a customer confused by the advertised DPI Resolution or Bit Depth of Xerox DocuColor production color systems? Most of the new DocuColor models advertise that they offer 2400dpi. Here are more details on what they are talking about:
o The print controller on the Xerox (be it Fiery, Creo or Xerox FreeFlow) sends 600x600dpi at 8 bits per pixel to the print engine, therefore the engine is NOT truly a 2400dpi process, as it is NOT receiving 2400dpi from the computer workstation. (if it was, the file size would be enormous, and would take all day to RIP the file)
o The print engine uses VCSEL technology which stands for Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser, meaning that 32 beams of laser light are used to create the image using 8 micron sized toner particles.
o The print engine takes the instructions from the print controller for one dot, and divides it into 4 quadrants. For example, in an area that is supposed to show 45% cyan, rather than dimming the laser to create the needed fill in the pixel, the Xerox VCSEL engine places a pattern in the 4 quadrants to simulate the 45% fill using a screening method.
o In summary, each 8 bit 600dpi pixel byte sent by the computer through the RIP print controller is converted in the Fuji-made engine to 4 bit 2400dpi binary pixels.
- Xerox launched another desktop color MFP, the Phaser 6180MFP offering:
o Made by Fuji Film of Japan
o Base MSRP of $999.00
o Copy/print/fax/scan standard
o 20ppm color and 31ppm b/w top print speed
o 7ppm color copy speed
o 50 sheet document feeder
o Color laser technology using polymerized toner technology
o 4 tandem OPC drum design
o 400MHz processor
o 384MB RAM
o Standard paper capacity is 150 sheet tray, 250 sheet tray
o $499 for optional 550 sheet tray
o Letter and legal size only
o Up to 220gsm paper weight
o PCL and PostScript standard
o 600x600dpi with 4 bits per pixel
o Optional automatic duplex ($199)
o 60K/month maximum duty cycle (based on b/w pages)
o 10 second first color page out time
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include supplies (which can cost as high as $1.00 per page based on coverage)
- The FM division of Pitney Bowes (PMBS) announced it will use FMAudit software to track customers’ usage of MFPs and printers on their network for cost control.
- Fujitsu announced that it will outsource the service contracts for printers it sells in the U.S. to Pitney Bowes. Fujitsu’s computer division bundles HP, Lexmark & Zebra printers with its computer systems.
- Dell Computer apparently will relabel a desktop b/w laser MFP that has engine from Konica Minolta, called the Dell 1125MFP:
o Street price of $199
o 21ppm b/w top speed as a printer (only 10ppm as copier)
o Product assembled by Primax of Taiwan
o Copy/scan/print/fax standard
o Built-in print controller made by Zoran
§ 133MHz processor
§ 32MB RAM
§ 10/100BaseT & USB ports
o Measures 16.3”W x 17.5”D x 14.8”H
o Weighs 23.3 lbs.
o 2 line x 16 character LCD display
o 250 sheet paper tray
o 100 sheet exit tray
o 10 sheet stack bypass tray
o 30 sheet document feeder
o Letter and legal size only paper handling
o Black toner cartridge sells for $62.99 and has yield of 2000 pages based on 5% coverage on page
o Max duty cycle of 9K/month
o Engine life of 50,000 impressions
o 16 second first print out time
o Scans in color or b/w at 10opm
- Ricoh Aficio MFPs now offer connection to Sage Software MAS90 or MAS 200ERP accounting system software. What is required is a $2000 option called Transaction Link, allowing scanned images from the copier to be accepted as PDFs.
- Ricoh now shipping the $999 Smart Accounting option for its MFPs which provides automatic reporting of copy/print/fax/scan usage of the device.
- Ricoh has decided to make desktop versions of it color inkjet MFPs. As you may recall, Ricoh launched a new inkjet technology called GelSprint, which used a higher viscosity ink, and supposedly a faster drying time than traditional ink. It uses this technology in the unsuccessful Ricoh Aficio 615C color MFP. The new desktop model will offer:
o street price of $999
o Copy/print/scan/fax
o Letter or legal size paper only
o Top speed of 29ppm color or b/w (based on low quality mode, with only 5% coverage per color on page)
- Ricoh’s corp. office in West Caldwell, NJ announced that it is now providing its corporate employees with Visa credit cards from JPMorgan Chase to cut down costs:
o More accurate transaction data
o Increased supervision over card misuse and fraud
o Harnessed fragmented meeting spending
o Provided to 800 employees
o Laser year had total travel & entertainment spending of $20 million per year
o Total spent on airfare per year $13 million
- Ricoh announced it will implement software from Activeplant Corp. to streamline the productivity of its toner manufacturing plants.
- At the recent Graph Expo show, Ricoh, in a private room, showed an 80ppm production color device that it apparently hopes to launch in January of 2009 to compete against bizhub PRO C6500.
- Competing against the new Ricoh Aficio MP C series of workgroup/midrange color laser MFPs?
o If customer goes for the generic print controller, and not the Fiery, they will have to buy PostScript option, which can add as much as $1000 to selling price. (without PostScript, they run risk of lower quality prints, and inaccurate color when printing out PostScript files or PDF files) This is because Ricoh does not make its own print controllers (most likely made by Oak Technology) DeskTopBinder Lite also will not work without PostScript option.
o In the job queue on the control panel, copy jobs and print jobs are shown in separate lists, so can not re-prioritize the jobs effectively.
o No selection for one sided copies, so if you select two-sided duplex mode, end user will not know how to switch back to single sided copies.
o LCD control panel does not tile or swivel
o Control panel does not have a help mode
o LCD control panel does NOT have a contrast adjustment
o Can only program ahead up to 8 jobs, and must press a small key labeled “New Job” to access
o PostScript driver can not automatically sense how the MFP is configured, and must be done manually.
o The PCL and optional PostScript driver have an entirely different look and feel, making it confusing to customer
o The PostScript driver is text based, with a line listing of features, and does not have icons to help end users.
o The PostScript driver can only print from one paper source for the print job (so covers and page insertions are impossible)
o According to BLI testing, only the Ricoh RPCS driver (which uses the customer’s computer workstation to perform the RIPping or processing) can product a booklet when using Adobe Acrobat.
o If end user scans a job to e-mail, the unit will not display an error message if the e-mail address does not exist.
o The systems are NOT 8 bits per pixel
o The stack sheet bypass does NOT recognize paper size, and must be programmed manually by the customer
o 10point stock, necessary for direct mail postcards or sell sheets, is only acceptable in the stack bypass
o Maximum size of booklets is only 15 sheets
o It can NOT print on tabs
- In order to boost its sales of Konica Minolta made production color MFPs to print for pay establishments, IKON announced it is offering the “IKON Business Booster Pack”, which is free with purchase. It includes two modules which cover the following topics:
o How to integrate digital print technology into a print operation
o Introduction to variable data
o Intro to designing for digital
o Color management tips
o Binding and finishing guide
o Workflow management
o Digital asset management
o Data security tips
o Demand generation
o Business and marketing plan development
o Sales management
o Recruiting
o Applications
o Measuring results
- Updated details on Sharp MX-6201N and MX-7001N color MFPs:
o Base MSRPs of $32,850 and $38,850
o 50ppm top speed full color
o 62 and 70ppm top speed b/w respectively
§ The existing models, the MX-6001N and MX-7001N which are $2K less and offer only 41ppm color speed, are still temporarily in the product lineup.
o 4 tandem OPC drum design
o Microfine toner (pulverized toner infused with wax)
o 600x600dpi with 4 bit depth per pixel
o No fuser oil
o Has large 10.4” full color LCD touch screen control panel
o Black toner yield of 42,000 pages based on 5% coverage per page
o Color toners (cyan, magenta & yellow) yield of 32,000 pages each based on 5% coverage per color
o Black drum yield of 300,000
o Color drums yield of 100,000
o Maximum duty cycle of 300,000 black pages per month or 90,000 color pages per month
o 7.2 second first color copy out time
o Paper supply features:
§ 3100 sheet standard paper supply made up of two 500 sheet drawers, a 2000 sheet letter size only drawer and a 100 sheet stack bypass
§ Optional 3500 sheet paper deck holds letter size only $1495
§ Optional 3000 sheet 11”x17” paper deck for $2895
§ Up to 170lb. index in stack bypass
o Auto duplex up to 90lb. index
o 150 sheet document feeder (scans both sides of original at same time)
§ Speed of 65opm for b/w, but only 35opm for full color
o 1.28GB RAM copier memory
o Optional print controllers:
§ generic controller (made by Zoran Corp.)
· 1GB RAM
· Can print directly from or scan to a USB device via second USB port
· Second USB port can also be used to plug in a keyboard for data entry
· 1GHz processor
· 80GB hard drive
· 10/100BaseT & USB ports
· PCL emulation standard
· PostScript option for $745.00
· $595 for bar code printing
· Optional data security kit
· Scan to e-mail/LDAP/FTP/folder
· Optional Internet fax $545
§ EFI Fiery.
· $4775.00 MSRP
· 2GHz processor
· 256MB RAM (upgrade to 512MB)
· 80GB hard drive
· PFL & PostScript
o Optional OSA-II adaptor for $349 (will allow software to run in the LCD control panel, including accessing the Internet)
o Optional fax kit for $1295
o Optional SharpDesk document management software for $233 for one user or $3650 for 100 users
o Finishing options include stapling, booklet-making, hole-punch and cover insertion
§ Required $525 paper pass unit for all finishers
§ 50 sheet stapling finisher for $2895
§ 15 sheet booklet maker finisher for $4495
§ $810 for hole punching
§ $2095 for post process cover insertion unit
- Sagem of France, which partners with Konica Minolta on low end desktop MFPs, announced that it will offer its customers in Europe optional air fresheners that bolt on to the side of copiers near the air vent, called the Zen Cube. Price is $27 each with a choice of 6 different scents.
- Graphic designers are predicted to spend $53.5 million on digital cameras and $49.5 million on color scanners in the next year.
- InfoTrends predicts that the sales of Web2Print software (i.e. PrintGroove) will increase by 17% by 2011, from $195 million to $432 million.
- InfoTrends predicts that 25% of all printed materials will be generated on-demand (digital). It feels that color will grow by 20% by 2011.
- IDC predicts that only 21% of all desktop laser printers purchased in the U.S. this year will be color.
- EFI, maker of Fiery print controllers, announced that it would take a non-cash charge of about $150 million to account for misdated options. (EFI ran intro trouble when former employees were mishandling their stock options)
- National Semiconductor announced it has developed a new computer chip, called the LM98714, which will allow desktop color laser MFPs to boost their color copying speeds. The new chip is a three channel (RGB) 16 bit analog front end (AFE) that works with the charge coupled device (CCD) scanner to provide better image quality and higher output speeds at a lower cost.
- Kyocera Mita’s Vice President, Joseph O’Malley, has left to take over Stewart Business Systems, which has 7 locations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. SBS was the country’s largest Savin dealer, and part of Global, which was then acquired by Xerox. SBS was being run by the original owner Chuck Cahn, who has now retired.
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