MFP Industry Notes

Found this on the web, enjoy.

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

With the recent addition of IKON, Ricoh now markets its copiers under the following names across the world:

o Savino Gestetn ero Laniero Nashuateco Rex-Rotaryo Infoteco IBMMore details about IKON revealed after acquisition by Ricoh:

o $1.45 billion in shareholder equityo $4.16 billion in revenue last fiscal year.

o $900 million in long term deb to 24,000 employees.

o Over 400 locations in U.S. and Europe.

o 8000 employees and $800 million in revenue from Professional Services division.

o 1,900 facility management sites.

o Has over 900,000 machines in field (mostly Canon).

o Over 5,000 sales reps.

o On 9/11/08, it announced it will lay off 315 employees in its legal document services (LDS) division, and close 23 of the 71 existing LDS offices.

Ricoh announced it is now offering embedded software option for its copiers that tracks usage. The product is called Argos Embedded Copy Tracking from Sepialine Inc.

Toshiba announced it has won a copier bid for the Lumberton School District of North Carolina:o Supposedly will save district $500,000 per year.

o Old contract, using 7 different vendors was for $1 million per year.

o Initially, the savings will be $150,000 per year, until old lease paid off.

o Contract is a copy per copy lease with all equipment, service and supplies for 1.5 to 2 cents per b/w copy.

o Includes a guaranteed 4 to 6 hour response time and replacement guarantee.

Xerox announced that it will release to the public, at no charge, 11 patents that have to do with removing contaminants from soil. The patents have to do with using a powerful vacuum in removing poisons from groundwater, which Xerox used itself in a past cleanup effort on one of its properties.

All Associates Inc. released results of a survey of corporate America:

o Document management and production can consume from 6.61% to 14.79% of a company’s total annual revenue.

o The average cost to generate a b/w page on a desktop laser printer is 5 cents.o A company with 500 employees prints an average of 25,000 pages per day and spends $420,000 per year.

o The research firm estimates that most companies could save up to 40% or $30 per employee per month by implementing print management.

History of the Royal company:

o Founded in 1904 by Edward Hess and Lewis Myers to make and sell typewriters.

o In 1906, first model launched called the Royal 1o In 1914, launched the Royal 10, which featured beveled glass sides (for see-through look)

o Original location was an old machine shop in Brooklyn, New York.

o In 1908 moved to Hartford, CT.

o By 1923, Edward Hess received 140 patents for typewriter technology.

o In 1926, launched the Royal Quiet Deluxe, a portable model.

o For next 70 years, produced millions of typewriters and led industry.

o During World War II, switched to producing ordinance for the military.

o In 1954, merged with McBee Corp., a maker of accounting machines.

o Was once part of Fortune 500, and had 12,000 employees.

o Was purchased by Litton Industries in 1965.

o Ownership then changed to Volkswagon, Triumph-Adler, and then Olivetti.

o Launched a copier division, by relabeling Konica copiers in 1984, then sold this division to Konica in 1986.

o In 2004, management of Royal purchased the company back, and moved to Somerset, NJ.

Samsung of Korea claims that last quarter, it sold more desktop color laser printers than any other manufacturer, with over 80,000 units placed or a 30% market share.

Canon has yet to enunciate how it is going to make up for the lost distribution from IKON, DANKA & Global. The company only has 53 direct branches in the U.S.

Clash Media released a study that says that companies in the U.S. are now spending 50% of their marketing budget on-line. This means that print for pay establishments should incorporate PURLs into their direct mail campaign offerings.

Sharp announced it has purchased Business World, Inc., a copier dealer in New Jersey:o branch manager of new Sharp Business Systems will be Eric Lombardo, former dealer employee.

o dealership was founded 26 years ago.

o purchase price unknownKonica Minolta technology wins another award.

FINETECH gave out its Grand Prize for the new Konica Minolta Spectroradiometer CS-2000. This device is used to measure the performance of flat screen color displays:

o Is used by makers of HDTVs to insure their product meets standards before shipment.

o Can measure contrast of 1000,000 to 1o Can see luminance as low as 0.003cd/meter squared, the world’s most sensitive instrument.

Kodak announced it has sold a NexPress 2100Plus to University Lithoprinters, a printshop in Michigan. The sale also included the NexGlosser option, as well as the MarketMover package, which contains templates and training for marketing color variable data jobs.

Xerox announced it will market a print controller that drives Epson color wide format inkjet printers, called the Caldera.

Xerox now shipping a new document management software package, named ScanFlowStore featuring:

o allows users to scan hardcopy documents and send them to multiple destinations.

o can send to network servers, document management solutions, email addresses or financial accounting packages like Great Plains

o was developed by X-Solutions

o also connects with legal software like Thomson Elite ProLawo scanned files are saved as text-searchable PDF so it is a middleware applicationo can select from any of 250 folder destinations.

o can email documents to several users and print them to remote locations.

o can read bar code fonts for batch scanning.

Oce’ announced that it has officially endorsed the use of NCR paper in the CS650, which is a relabeled Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6500. The particular branch of NCR paper it endorses, is the Appleton Paper XeroForm II.

A company in San Francisco, called Plastic Logic, announced plans to launch a sheet of flexible plastic, that will show the news, and automatically update itself using the Internet. Unknown is launch date and pricing. One solution software maker purchased another.

OpenText Corp. of Canada (makers of LiveLink and eDOCS) purchased Captaris ( maker of RightFax) Inc. for $131 million.

When Hewlett Packard sales reps are selling the Indigo production color systems, they usually will tell the print shop owner prospect, that the Indigo is different from other digital systems because it uses ink, like an offset printing press. However, this is not accurate, as it actually uses toner. Here is the wording from the Indigo technology patent application:

o “The present invention relates to printing images on a substrate using liquid toner and in particular to methods of applying toner to the substrate to print the image. Liquid toner comprises toner particles dispersed in a carrier liquid. Printing an image on a substrate using liquid toner involves extracting toner particles from the carrier liquid and depositing the extracted toner particles on the substrate in a pattern suitable to form the image.”

Street pricing seen the print for pay marketplace:

o Xerox 700 Digital Color Press w/Creo/LCT/booklet finisher for $68,300, with color clicks @ $0.049 and b/w clicks @ $0.0129. 11”x17” billed as one click.

o Xerox 700 Digital Color Press w/embedded Fiery/LCT/no finisher for $54,000.

o Canon imageRUNNER 7095 w/embedded controller/finisher/LCT/hole-punch for $20,600 with b/w clicks @ $0.0039. 11”x17” billed as one click.

o Xerox 4112 w/external Fiery/booklet-maker for $36,700 and b/w clicks for $0.0057. 11”x17” billed as one click.

Kyocera, in an attempt to boost sagging sales, announced it will now give its PrintQ Manager software to its dealers for free. This will allow dealers to give print tracking ability to customers for free when buying Kyocera devices, and the software will track any brand device.

Print management data according to DocuAudit International:o print volumes are growing 11% annuallyo copy volumes are declining 2% annually.

o HP sold 60 million printers last year.

o Xerox sold 3 million printers last year.

o Kyocera only sold 115,000 printers last year

o Average print volume for a desktop laser printer is 3,000 per month.

o Less 3% of laser prints made are under a print management program.

o Every $1 spent on printing results in $9 spent on managing the document