Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Driving Our Own Demise "MFP Business"


I just had the time to read Jim Lyons Observations Blog titled
Lyra Symposium -- first sessions include keynotes from Ricoh's Potesky and Xerox's Appelo, Lyra's LeCompte and Priede size up the industry
.

One conclusion that Jim offered up was are we "Driving Our Own Demise"?

Well, come to think of it, we are offering our customers more solutions to print and copy less along with scanning more. Along with that we sell hardware devices that put ink on paper. The manufacturers HP, Canon, Xerox, Ricoh and the rest all survive by planned obsolecense and the need for consumables. How can these manufacturers survive by reducing the amount of pages that are printed and copied every year?

I've heard from a few members in the P4P Hotel in recent days, and we continue to see an increase in the scanning of documents, in some cases users are scanning more than they copy and print. Far be it from me to be the first to start charging for scans, however I think the industry may have to go that way, especially if print and copy volumes continue to drop.

It's very strange indeed.

1 comment:

Coordinator of the Printernet Project said...

I think you've put your finger on a big deal problem. Imagine Xerox having just invented erasable paper that, as I understand it, eliminates toner and is designed for print once, after about 1 hour (don't quote me) then Print again.

It's not really a surprise that they can't figure out the business model.

My take is that it's going to be about connecting MFP's to a global output network. Print 10 copies here, print 200 copies at the inplant or the commercial printer.

Do you think that might make sense?