Friday, May 15, 2009

MFP Weekend Indsutry Notes 5/10/09

Xerox announced it sold notes to raise $750 million in cash

Xerox announced the “Color Unleashed” road show to demonstrate the ColorQube to prospective customers:
- Washington, DC on 5/7/09
- Chicago, IL on 5/7/09
- Houston, TX on 5/7/09
- Bloomington, IL on 5/13/09
- Phoenix, AZ on 5/14/09
- Dallas, TX on 5/14/09
- Philadelphia, PA on 5/14/09
- Los Angeles, CA on 5/15/09
- Universal City, CA on 5/19/09

Xerox announced that 300 workers at its Webster, NY campus will be forced to take 6 weeks off.

Xerox announced it has promoted Paul Schulman to President and COO of Global Imaging, reporting to Michael Shea, who is Global’s CEO.

Xerox ended a contract it had with a print-for-pay franchise company in England after the franchise owners found out about kickbacks back to the corp. office. On Demand Communications (ODC) had a preferred supplier contract with Xerox for its Kall Kwik and Prontaprint franchisees, however, apparently ODC never informed its store owners that rebates were going to ODC when the stores acquired Xerox equipment.

Canon, in an effort to make up for loss of distribution through IKON and DANKA, announced it has signed up 11 new dealers in the U.S. Up to 75 more could be added in the next couple of years. Unlike some other manufacturers, with Canon this is a very slow and tedious process.

Canon announced that it has won the “MFP Line of the Year” award for 2008 from Buyers Labs Inc.

Canon announced it sold an imagePRESS C6000 and a C6000VP to a Minuteman Press print shop in Cambridge, MA.

Canon Europe hired Orange Business Services of France to operate its customer call center in Europe.

Toshiba announced that it will hold two regional dealer meetings instead of one large event:
- July 14-16, 2009 at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas
- July 27-29, 2009 at Hyatt Regency in Jersey City

Toshiba Corp. announced that during last quarter the company lost 184 billion in yen, and did not expect to show a profit this year. It also stated plans to buy a 52% stake in Nuclear Fuel Enterprises of Japan, to expand it nuclear plant division.

Sharp launched three new b/w laser MFPs, the MX-M363N, MX-M453N & MX-M503N featuring:
- Has same cosmetic look as the Sharp “Frontier Series”
- A3 designs, up to 11”x17”
- 36, 45 & 50ppm top speeds
- Optional fax board
- Uses pulverized micro-fine toner
- Auto duplex standard
- 8.5” full color touchscreen LCD control panel
- retractable keyboards
- 35ppm scan speed
- 600x600dpi copy
- 600x600dpi scan
- 1200x1200dpi print
- Maximum paper supply of 5600 sheets with options
- 100 sheet document feeder that scans both sides of original at same time
- While unit only outputs in b/w, it can also scan in color
- Optional internal stapling finisher
- Built-in print/scan controller standard
- 800MHz processor
- 10/100/1000BaseT & USB ports
- 512MB RAM
- 80GB hard drive
- PCL & PostScript print drivers
- OSA technology which allows embedded applications

IKON, a division of Ricoh, announced a new product from EFI, called DocSend Server featuring:
- The original IKON DocSend, is a relabeled version of the EFI SendMe, a competitor of eCopy ScanStation, that is an external device which stands next to an MFP for touch screen
scanning functionality.
- DocSend Server instead uses an embedded application in the Ricoh MFP’s control panel, coupled with an application loaded on to the customer’s server.
- Includes OCR for file conversion to readable PDF, MS Word or MS Excel files.
- Pricing not announced

Ricoh makes a big change at its InfoPrint division, which was acquired from IBM. Out is Tony Romero, in is Ricoh Japan executive, Daisuke Segawa as CEO and President.

Cenveo Corp. of Connecticut, distributor of graphic arts supplies, announced it is purchasing Nashua Corp. of New Hampshire for $44.4 million. At one time, Nashua made generic toner and other consumables that fit Ricoh copiers. As part of a settlement of a lawsuit with Ricoh in 2006, the company left the toner business and focused on supplies and paper for wide format printers.

Seneca Data, a distributor and repair center for Okidata printers, has purchased one of its competitors. It has acquired Agson, Inc.,, which does the same for Lexmark, HP and Citizen printers.

Kyocera announced that it has partnered with three leasing company to offer its dealers a unified leasing program:
- GE Capital
- GreatAmerica
- Wells Fargo

Hewlett Packard conducted an open house to show its beta install of its HP Inket Web Press. The test install is at O’Neil Data Systems in Los Angeles, CA. Details:
- Will ship commercially in late 2009 or early 2010
- 1200x600dpi
- Top speed of 400 feet per minute using rolls of paper
- Uses printhead technology found in the Edgeline MFP
- Two others have asked for beta installs, Courier Corp. and Consolidated Graphics
- 30” wide paper handling
- Uses HP Exstream print server software

A British managed print services company announced plans to open office in the U.S. NewField IT will open office in Clearwater, FL and will be run by Ed Mostellar, VP. He was hired from Lexmark.

Microsoft, which is getting ready to launch its new operating system, Windows 7, has already been hit with anti-trust lawsuits from some of its competitors in the web browsing category.

Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, announced that he would not resign from the board of Apple Computer despite a probe launched by the FTC into whether involvement in both tech companies violates federal antitrust law.

Marvell, maker of generic print controllers, is suing a competitor as it claims the company gained trade secrets when it taped a voice mail inadvertently left by a Marvell lawyer who forgot to hangup his speakerphone.

DocuWare, maker of document management software, announced:
- recorded its 20th year in business
- installed 845 licenses in 2007
- installed 1011 licenses in 2008
- growth rate of 20%
- total revenue of 11.5 million Euro

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