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WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
11-25-07

The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.


- Xerox, through its Global division, purchased another dealer, this time imageQUEST. Details:
o locations in Wichita, Salina, Hutchinson & Kansas City, Kansas
o dealer for HP, Canon & Savin
o founded in 1995 by Bob Hughey
o CIO is Jack Boucher, President is Mark Lindquist
o Has 3,500 customers

- Xerox announced that the average print volume on an iGen3 is 400,000 color clicks per month, with 215 print shops owning more than one. 90 of the installed units are averaging over 1,000,000 per month. (Worldwide installed base between 2000 and 2100 units since product launched 5 years ago)

- Xerox announced it has won FM contracts this year at:
o Raytheon Corp. (Tucson)
o University of California
o U.S. Navy
o Xerox claims that the total market for this is $24 billion

- Xerox launched another new desktop color laser printer, the Phaser 6310 offering:
o Is laser technology with polymerized toner
o 1GB RAM
o Letter/legal size only
o 12ppm color and 16pm b/w speeds
o 600x600dpi
o Made by Fuji
o 4 bits per pixel
o 10/100BaseT
o Base MSRP $399
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include very expensive supplies

- Ames On-Demand, a print shop in Somerville, MA, announced it has run 3 million color pages on its Xerox iGen3 color systems. Details:
o Print job was text books for local colleges
o Printed a total of 22 million pages on the 4 Xerox iGen3 systems it owns
o Owner is Steve DeForge
o Produces 600,000 books per year
o By end of 2007, will have printed 50 million color pages
o Hopes to print 80 million color pages in 2008

- IKON now offering a kit to boost sales of its production color devices, called “IKON Business Booster Pack”
o Free kit that contains two modules
o First set offers intro to VDP, design, color management, finishing, workflow, digital asset management, security and staffing suggestions
o Second set offers into to business plan development, sales management, recruiting, selling VDP and measuring results
o Customer must buy optional software to runs applications that are recommended
o On-site training provided for $220 per hour



- IKON, which announced it will buy back - an additional $500 million of its stock shares to boost share value, had its credit rating reduced by Standard & Poor’s.
o It was placed on “BB” negative corporate credit rating, reflecting that IKON will use incremental debt financing and existing cash to finance the share repurchase, thereby increasing its leverage and reducing its financial flexibility.
o IKON also said it has entered into an amended confidentiality deal with Steel Partners II, LP, run by Warren Lichtensteim, through which Steel Partners has agreed to refrain from taking certain actions on its investment in IKON through May 2009.
o The stock buyback may prevent IKON from making any more acquisitions, and possibly make it easier to be sold to another firm.

- Kodak announced it has sold a NexPress 2100 production color system, with Kodak INSITE software (web2print and VDP) to Range Printing of Minnesota.

- Hewlett Packard reported its last quarter’s earnings:
o printer division revenue grew 4% to $7.6 billion
o printer supplies revenue grew 6%
o printer unit sales revenue grew 5%
o printer units shipments grew 5%
o Indigo sales up 15%
o MFP sales up 26%
o Printer division profit of $1.1 billion

- Kyocera now shipping two new b/w MFPs, the KM-3040 and KM-2540 offering:
o 30 and 25ppm top speeds respectively
o 600x600dpi
o 192MB RAM
o Maximum paper capacity of 2200 sheets
o Optional print controller made by Peerless Corp.
o Optional fax board
o Uses amorphous silicon ceramic drums

- Peerless Corp., which has had financial difficulties, announced it has rebuffed an attempt by a disgruntled shareholder to place an outsider on the company’s board of directors.

- DANKA provided its financials for the first six months of its fiscal year:
o total revenue down 8.5% to $211.5 million
o retail equipment sales down 8.2% to $93.7 million
o service revenue down 7.5% to $111.8 million
o gross margin down 20 basis points to 35.6%
o operating earnings of $2.6 million
o net interest expense of $9.4 million
o net loss of $19.3 million

- DANKA announced that it has been authorized to carry the Kodak line of high volume desktop scanners.(as you may know, DANKA is already authorized to sell/service the Kodak DigiMaster line of production b/w systems)



- Konica Minolta Australia announced two new promotions to boost sales of color MFPS:
o Contest to win $6300 trip to Daintree Eco Lodge & Spa
§ Includes airfare
§ 5 nights
§ Wuba Spa treatment for two
§ Julma Body Massage for two
§ Gift Spa pack
§ $500 in spending money
o Free Navman S30 personal GPS navigational device with purchase of bizhub color MFP
o It also sponsored a survey of office workers that revealed:
§ 61% admit they don’t know how to correctly use their printers
§ 31% admit that there are functions that their printers have that could add productivity, but they do not use them
§ 25% admit to now knowing how to use the functions of the printers
§ 5% were at a complete loss on how to use their printers
§ 53% wish there printer would be replaced with better model
§ 11% wanted more functions
§ 26% are annoyed by printer jams
§ 24% complained about poor image quality
§ 19% complained that printer is too slow
§ 13% complained about printer breakdowns

- Ricoh won a “Gold” award for a direct mail ad campaign it ran for its factory direct branches (RBS) to promote production VDP color. The mailers had a full color book jacket cover, showing the customer as the book’s author. The mailer had a 15% response rate, out of 2,000.

- Ricoh is now shipping the Aficio GX3050N GelSprinter MFP offering:
o small desktop size
o uses color inkjet technology
o 29ppm top speed color and b/w speeds (based upon page with 5% coverage)
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include supplies

- EFI announced it will buy back $100 million of its stock shares, in an attempt to boost its share price. In other news, a college was named after the founder of the company. In Israel is now the EFRAM ARAZI (Efi) School of Computer Science.

- So how many copier/MFP dealers are there in the U.S.?
o Canon claims it has 250 dealers that carry the full line, and 200 smaller dealers that carry entry level products up to 45ppm.
o Kyocera claims it has 375 Kyocera dealers and 330 smaller Copystar dealers
o Panasonic claims it has 400 dealers
o Ricoh claims it has 167 Ricoh dealers, 201 Savin dealers and 246 Lanier dealers
o Sharp claims it has 400 dealers
o Toshiba claims that is has 252 dealers
o Xerox claims it has 400 dealers (sales agents)
o As many carry more than one brand, it is estimated that there are 1,810 dealers total

- Update on the state of Quark Corp, maker of QuarkXPress desktop publishing software:
o Founded in 1981 by Tim Gill & Fred Ebrahimi in Denver, CO before Adobe Corp.
o 1987 QuarkXPress 1.0 released and became the best seller
o In the last 5 years, lost much of its customer base to Adobe InDesign
o Still claims to have millions of customers
o Tim Gill & Fred Ebrahimi have now left company, as it is run by members of Ebrahimi family, including daughter Sasha Ebrahimi as chairwoman
o Current CEO is Ray Schiavone
o Terry Welty is Senior VP of Marketing
o Currently employs 1000 people
o 600 of the employees are in India
o Will open a research & development facility in Palo Alto, CA
o Over 20% of revenue is spent on R&D
o 70,000 of current customers have upgrade to new version 7.0

- Info on the world’s largest maker of offset presses, Heidelberg, and the worldwide print market:
o Each day, 60 billion pages are printed
o 70% of these pages are printed with an offset press
o Heidelberg has 40% marketshare of offset presses
o Top speed of 18,000 sheets per hour, or 300ppm
o Average press contains 50,000 to 100,000 parts
o Offset presses made in 3 plants in Germany, Amstetten, Brandenburg & Wiesloch-Walldorf
o Also plant in Qingpu, China
o In Germany, 8500 are employed
o Annual production of 3,000 presses per year
o Total of 200,000 customers across 170 countries
o 5 smelting furnaces used to forge large metal parts
o The largest part, the cylinder, is made from iron heated to 1400 degrees Centigrade (2552 degrees Farenheit)
o The cylinder can take over 5 days to cool down to be used, and weighs up to 4.3 tons
o The entire press can weigh up to 50 tons
o Due to their weight, it is recommended to have a concrete floor up to 26” thick
o It is recommended to let unassembled parts sit on concrete for up to 10 days to allow concrete to sag and stabilize before assembling finished product for best alignment
o Can take up to 3,000 minutes to build press
o Company was founded in 1850 as Maschinenfabrik Hamm in Frankenthal, Germany
o Renamed Heidelberg when it moved to Heidelberg, Germany in 1896
o First press named the Tiegel
o Makes change from letterpresses to offset presses in 1962
o Production suspended during World War II, and restarted in 1947
o In 1956, moved to Wiesloch-Walldorf.
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