WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
12-9-07
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from industry publications.
- Canon launched two new desktop scanners, the imageFORMULA DR-2510C and DR-2010C offering:
o Base MSRPs of $795 & $895
o 25opm and 20opm top speeds respectively
o Can scan both sides of originals at same time
o Uses CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) scanning technology. (most copier/MFPs use CCD, which stands for “charge coupled device”, as this technology generally is able to capture more halftones, which is necessary for high quality color output)
o Scans in color or b/w
o Auto color detection
o Auto moire’ reduction
o Auto page size detection
o Auto blank page deletion
o Letter/legal size only
o Can scan thick stock, including multipart forms without damage
o Can feed drivers licenses and photo id cards
o Includes CapturePerfect 2.0, Adobe Acrobat 8.0, ScanSoft PaperPort Se, Nuance OmniPage 4SE and Presto! BizCard 5 software
- Xerox announced some changes in corp. management:
o Doug Lord is now President of Solutions Group in U.S., replacing Michael Brannigan. Mr. Lord was formerly in charge of Xerox Canada
o Kevin Warren is now in charge of Xerox Canada, formerly in charge of the Global acquisition, and before that was in charge of Sales for Eastern Region U.S. (Xerox Canada has annual revenue of $1.2 billion with 4200 employees)
o Emerson Fullwood is no longer Chief Marketing Officer, with no replacement announced.
o All report to Jim Firestone, President of Xerox North America.
o Shaun Pantling is now VP of Xerox Global Services in Europe
o Wilem Appelo is now Senior VP of Xerox Worldwide Strategic Services Group.
- The President of Xerox North America, Jim Firestone, now has a second job. He was elected to the board of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Corp.
- Xerox announced it will resell a UV coater made in Paris, France. Looking to satisfy clients that want to add a shiny, glossy finish to their color copier/MFP output, Xerox will offer as an option, the UVarnish device, made by MGI Digital Graphic Technology. It can run up to 2400 sheets per hour. No pricing announced for this off-line device.
- In Wilsonville, Oregon, Xerox will open on December 12th, a $24 million facility to produce more color wax sticks for its Phaser printers that use this “solid ink” technology (models usually start with number 3 or 8).
- Fuji of Japan, maker of most Xerox equipment, previewed at a trade show in Japan, what it calls “Color ePaper”. It is made with reflective liquid cystals and laminated to sheet of plastic, which is 0.4 millimeters thick, and can be bent. The sheet connects to a computer, and can create a color image in less than one second, with a memory that can hold the image after it is disconnected from the computer. Unknown the pricing, or when it will ship.
- Kodak announced it will offer EasyPurl software as an option for its NexPress production color systems for variable data purposes.
- Kodak announced it has sold a NexPress S3000 production color system to Larry Lengacher, owner of Craftline Printing in Fort Wayne, IN.
- Typewriter causes panic. Streets were closed in Sarasota, Florida, after someone reported a potential bomb threat in a parking garage. Police showed up and detonated the case, only to discover it was an old portable typewriter.
- The Direct Marketing Association reports that full color direct mail drives sales growth by 5.3%. In contrast, TV ads drive growth by 5%, newspaper ads by 0.9%, magazine ads by 3% and radio by 3%. It also expects that direct mailers will grow to 7 billion per year by 2012. (more reasons for customers to invest in bizhub PRO C6500s)
- Copier dealer in hot water. State of Illinois is investigating claims that the Illinois Department of Transportation, which awarded a bid for 315 machines for $400,000, unknowingly received used copiers, instead of new, as specified in bid. The dealer involved is M&M Computers of New York, NY.
- Oce’ announced new production print models, that use rolls of paper (continuous feed):
o VarioStream laser production print systems
§ VarioStream 8550, top speed of 530ipm
§ VarioStream 8650, top speed of 636ipm
§ VarioStream 8750, top speed of 750ipm
§ b/w or spot color possibilities
§ 19.5” paper width, with 19” print width
§ 240, 300 and 600dpi output choices
§ Up to 256 shades of grey
§ Optional magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) toner
§ Use LED technology (not laser)
§ Comes with Oce’ SRA4 print controller
o JetStream Series
§ High speed color inkjet production systems
§ (The name JetStream was originally used by the now defunct Management Graphics Inc. of Minnesota when it launched a print controller that worked with Canon, Ricoh & Minolta color copier/MFPs.)
§ JetStream 1100 runs at top speed of 1074ppm with paper width max of 20.5”
§ JetStream 2200 runs at top speed of 2148ppm with paper width max of 20.5”
§ Uses piezo crystal inkjet head technology, called Oce’ DigiDot
- Hewlett Packard claims that an increase in sales of Indigo production color systems is due in large part to sales to print shops in China, which market color printing services to customers worldwide using the Internet.
- Hewlett Packard announced it has sold an Indigo 3500s production color system to Digital Ink, a print shop in New York City.
- Hewlett Packard announced a new program for its dealers, called Office Printing Channel Program. This will require a larger commitment from dealers to sell the LaserJet MFPs, and Edgeline MFPs, but will provide bigger commissions on equipment sales and service/supplies sold, as well as marketing funds.
o Took 18 months to develop this new program, by Mark Quiroz, HP’s Worldwide Director of Strategy
o The company identified 15,000 large companies in the U.S., where HP was either not present, or only a small part of the company’s printer fleet. It decided to have its own sales force target the top 2300, and the rest to be handled by dealer/VARs.
- Dell Computer, beset by slowing sales, and losing market share, dumped its CEO, Kevin Rollins, and his replacement is company founder, Michael Dell.
o Mr. Rollins received a $48 million settlement.
o The company announced a new program to recruit computer dealer/VARs to increase sales
o Announced it will cut the size of its direct sales force.
- The next large trade show in the U.S. for MFP makers is the OnDemand show, on 3/3-6/2008, in Boston.
- BERTL announced its “Readers’ Choice” awards for 2007. These awards are based on the poll of end users’ opinions:
o Best Color Range Platinum Award = Konica Minolta
§ Gold Award = Xerox
o Color Reliability Platinum Award = Panasonic
§ Gold Award = Konica Minolta
o Most Customer Focused Platinum = Sharp
§ Gold Award = Oce’
o Ease of Use Platinum = Ricoh
§ Gold Award = Panasonic
o Monochrome Range Platinum = Oce’
§ Gold Award = Kyocera
o Monochrome Reliability Platinum = Kyocera
§ Gold Award = Oce’
- IKON announced it is offering a Creo print controller option for its relabeled version of the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C5500, which it calls the IKON CPP 550. The Creo will be called the IKON PowerPro 550.
- Toshiba announced that it has signed a 10 year lease to place a 55 foot tall billboard in Times Square, New York City. It had outbid the incumbent, Discover Credit Cards. The terms of the lease were not disclosed, but is estimated to cost up to $400,000 per month. (as you may recall, at one time there was a Minolta billboard in this location)
- Toshiba announced it has authorized Parts Now! as a distributor of its laser printers, and parts for its printers. Parts Now! resells to independent dealers in the U.S.
- A former Toshiba Corp. employee sued the major electronics manufacturer Friday for about 260 million yen in remuneration for profits the firm reaped from basic technologies he says he invented for Japanese word-processing software.
o Shinya Amano, a professor at Shonan Institute of Technology, said in a written complaint that although the firm received patents for the technologies in conjunction with him and three others and paid him tens of thousands of yen annually in remuneration, he actually developed the technologies alone.
o Amano is claiming 10 percent of an estimated ¥2.6 billion in profit Toshiba made in 1996 and 1997 — much higher than the roughly ¥230,000 he was actually awarded for the work over the two-year span.
o His claim is believed valid, taking into account the statute of limitations and the terms of the patents.
o "This is not about the sum of the money — I filed the suit for my honor," Amano said in a press conference after bringing the case to the Tokyo District Court.
o "Japan is a technology-oriented country, but engineers are treated too lightly here," he said.
o Toshiba said through its public relations office that it believes it paid Amano fair compensation in line with company policy.
o Amano claims that he invented the technology that converts a sentence composed of kana alone into a sentence composed of both kanji and kana by assessing its context, and another technology needed to prioritize kanji previously used in such conversions.
o Using theories of artificial intelligence, the two technologies developed in 1977 and 1978 are still used today in most Japanese word-processing software, he said.
- In an article in Dark Reading magazine, a security firm detailed on how they were hired by a large financial firm to test the company’s data security policy. They dressed as fake copier repair technicians, waltzed into the office, and under the pretense that they were loading new print drivers, were able to plug a USB thumb drive into several employees’ computer, and download confidential data.
- The former head of purchasing for the Mount Vernon, NY, Arthur Rose, was arraigned for a felony, for receiving a $3500.00 cash bribe from a Ricoh branch employee based upon the award of a $1 million copier bid, involving 73 units. Mr. Rose was released on $15,000 bail, and is facing 7 years in state prison. Unknown what happened to the Ricoh sales rep who provided the bribe.
- Sharp announced it will hire Pagemark Technology to develop print controller technology so that its copier/MFPs will work with Microsoft Windows Vista XPS.
- Xeikon, a division of Punch of Belgium, announced it has sold a Xeikon 6000 production color machine to Strategic Content Imaging, Inc., a print for pay in Carlstadt, NJ.
- A maker of print controller software for wide format color inkjet printers, is looking to buy copier dealerships. Visual Edge, run by Michael Brigner, announced that Brian Frank is now in charge of the two dealerships that Visual Edge owns in Ohio. Brian Frank used to run one of the dealerships, Graphic Enterprises Inc. (GEI). The other is Copeco Inc. The company hopes to make more acquisitions in 2008.
- Lexmark introduced a new desktop color laser printer, the Lexmark C782 offering:
o Base MSRP of $1299.00
o 35ppm color, 40ppm b/w
o 4 tandem OPC drum design with polymerized toner
o 1200x1200dpi actual (advertised as offering 4800dpi with interpolation)(NOT 8 bits per pixel)
o 256MB RAM standard (can upgrade to 768MB)
o 10/100BaseT & USB ports
o PCL and PostScript print drivers
o 150K/month max duty cycle
o Optional auto duplex
o Letter/legal size paper only (A4)
o Comes standard with 100 sheet stack bypass and 500 sheet drawer
o maximum of 3,100 sheet paper supply with options
o maximum paper weight of 110lb. index
o optional 40GB hard drive
o optional stapling finisher
o optional 5 bin mailbox
o can print banners up to 48” long, but only 8.5” wide
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include supplies
o Black toner cartridge yield of 6,000 pages, based on 5% coverage, for $148.50
o Yellow, magenta or cyan toner cartridge yield of 6,000 pages each, based on 5% coverage, for $260.00 each
- A poll conducted by Microsoft of users of Microsoft Exchange Server, chose Captaris, Inc. as their favorite document management solution software.
- Christmas trivia: The plant name; “mistletoe” is Celtic for “All Heal”, as the plant was thought to have miraculous healing powers. In a survey, respondents said:
o 36% are not decorating for Christmas
o 29% will skip a Christmas party
o 28% bought Christmas cards but never mailed them out
- Management turmoil at Panasonic. Steve Mullins, who was put in charge of the copier/fax division, was replaced by Nick Miyake, as President. Reporting to him is Richard Cottrell, as Head of sales for U.S., and was recruited from Lexmark.
- The First Bank & Trust building in McKinney, Texas, suffered damage after a small desktop laser printer started on fire in the offices of an Allstate Financial Services agent. The brand name of the offending printer was not released.
- Kyocera named Peter Richardson as Director of IT Reseller Channel Development & Marketing. His job will be to get more computer dealer/VARs to sell the Kyocera Mita product line. He was recruited from Ricoh, where he a similar job.
- SolutionOne, a Konica Minolta dealer with locations in Nebraska, announced it has launched a Professional Services Department. Owner is John Kuchta, and dealership was founded in 1937.
- An employee of a printshop in Wisconsin that prints issues of Business Week magazine, pleaded guilty for passing along advance copies of the magazine to insiders for cash. The insiders used articles in the future issues to plan the stock market, and supposedly made $6 to $7 million in ill-gotten gains before getting caught.
- A dealer in Colorado, AllCopy, is donating a copier a day for “The 12 Days of Christmas” to deserving non-profit firms in northern Colorado. The program is run by Joe Blazier.
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