The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from various trade publications.- Xerox stunned reporters when it announced that its popular CEO, Anne Mulcahy, would step down on 7/1/09. She will replaced by current president, Ursula Burns. She announced the company would reduce its research & development spend to $883 million.
- Hundreds of retired Xerox workers are picketing at the company headquarters as they are upset that Xerox stopped providing them with $1400 per year to cover healthcare costs. The move will supposedly save the Xerox $11 million per year.
- In a move to promote its managed print services program, PagePack, Xerox is now offering 250 free color clicks per month for the first year.
- Bowing to pressure from its Indigo printshop customers, Hewlett Packard announced it will scale back its MarketSplash on-line site that was supposed to sell printing to end users. HP has eliminated all advertising for the site and will shut down the site entirely in September. It will relaunch it later this year merely as a site to assist owners of HP desktop printers.
- Konica Minolta launched the Nassenger VII, which is a high speed, wide format, color inkjet printer designed to print on textile/fabric. It features 512 nozzle printheads to deliver a print speed of 210 square meters per hour, on fabric that is 1850 millimeter wide.
- Konica Minolta announced it is partnering with Guided Therapeutics Inc. of Norcross, GA to develop non-invasive cancer detection products using LightTouch technology.
- Kyocera launched its own managed print services program, FASTtrack, for its dealers, based on software from FMAudit.
- Competing against Kyocera color laser MFPs? Apparently their new models do not use polymerized toner, and use a fuser oil web. This old technology can create image consistency problems when the fuser rollers dry out over a long run.
- Borrell Associates released a stuffy that predicts that spending on direct mail will decline 39% during the next 5 years. The company believes that more marketers will move to e-mail advertisements. If this prediction is true, this does not bode well for growth of full color production print system volume.
- Former IBM Business Unit Executive, Michael Maupin, has joined The Water Training Institute, which will launch its Certified Managed Print Services Sells Program on 9/16/09 in Philadelphia, PA.
- Fedex Kinkos has sold its locations in England to The Color Company for an undisclosed sum.
- XPEDX launched a new line of paper designed for production color systems, called “Endurance Digital”
- advanced surface for uniform color application and toner adhesion
- 91 brightness
- Gloss and silk coatings
- Contains 15% post consumer waste fiber
- Ricoh announced that several of its production print systems won Editor’s Choice award from Better Buys For Business magazine, including the Pro C900, Pro 906EX, 1106EX and 1356EX.
- Ricoh announced its last quarter’s financials:
- total revenue declined from 579 billion yen to 523 billion yen
- copier/printer revenue down 10.6%
- copier/printer profit down 90%
- operating margin was negative 2.3% , as compared with 9% last year
- net income declined form a profit of 21 billion yen to a loss of 23 billion yen
- Ricoh announced it is now offering account tracking software from Technesis. The Technisis Print Control System offers:
- tracks by user, group and/or device
- can differentiate between color and b/w pages
- offer print assessments
- rules based messages promoting better printing efficiency
- delivers summary reporting
- tracks copies, scan, faxes and prints
- integrates with ODBS compliant databases, ERP systems
- Oce’ reported a 60% increase in sales of used copiers, claiming it sold 5,000 units in 2008. In addition, over 90% of these were leased, rather than purchased outright.
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