Weekend MFP Industry Notes 5/3/09

Copier/MFP industry news from various trade publications.

- Notable Solutions Inc. (NSi) of Maryland announced its first outside funding:
- Received $5 million from Edison Ventures of New Jersey
- Annual revenue between $15 and $20 million
- 75 employees
- Recently recruited away the VPs of sales and marketing of Kofax, a competitor
- Maker of the AutoStore document management software
- supports over 450 different MFP models
- offers over 24 different connectors for other document management programs
- Has 2500 customers worldwide
- Originally started making software for Hewlett Packard’s Digital Sender product
- IKON resells as DocAccel
- Xerox sells as SMARTdocument Travel
- Kyocera sells as KYOcapture

- X-Solutions of Denmark, made the following announcements:
- Makes ScanFlowStore, a scanning solution
- Was founded by a former Xerox agent
- Now has office in North Carolina
- 48 employees
- Xerox sells as ScanFlowStore
- Ricoh sells as DigiDocFlow
- MSRP of $1500 for first device
- MSRP of $500 per additional device
- Has 110 connectors for document management platforms

- Ricoh announced it is launching a service for end users to upload and store data. It will be called “Ricoh Quanp” and allowing on-line storing of photos, music, videos and documents. Possible cost will be $3.00 per month for 10GB, or $10 per month for 100GB.

- Ricoh gave out details on its past acquisition of DANKA Europe:
- Was originally established as InfoTec in 1972
- Was acquired by DANKA in 1995
- Was then purchased by Ricoh in 2006 for $210 million
- Originally sold Mita (now Kyocera) before switching to Ricoh products in mid 1990s
- In 2006, had $524 million in annual revenue
- Has 2,100 employees
- In contrast, IKON Europe, now also owned by Ricoh, had $549 million in annual revenue or 13% of IKON’s total revenue

- IKON announced it has sold a CPP650 (relabeled Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 6501) to Linden Print Co., a printshop in Ferndale, WA.

- Kofax, maker of document management software, announced:
- Kofax Capture is licensed to 140,000 users
- Kofax Virtual ReScan now has 300,000 licensed users

- Update from Silverbrook Research, inventor of the Memjet high speed color inkjet technology, and its struggles to finally bring a product to market:
- Headquartered in Australia
- U.S. office is in Boise, Idaho (ironically HP also has a printer facility there)
- designed a new ARM-based system on a chip to integrate functions
- has completed design of an A4 printhead
- printhead has 70,000 nozzles
- top speed of 60ppm for full color, which would disrupt the marketplace
- projected selling price for desktop printer of $300 to $500
- product might finally ship at end of 2009

- Kodak announced that its first quarter sales declined 29% due to slow economy.
- reported a loss of $360 million
- total sales of $1.477 billion
- revenue from digital business was $972 million
- GP was 13.1% of sales
- R&D expense of $110 million
- has $1.309 billion in cash on hand
- total debt of $1.306 billion

- Xerox won a bid to supply copiers to the Aberdeen Proving Ground of the U.S. Army in Maryland.

- Xerox announced it is sponsoring the 2009 Xerox Corporate Golf Challenge, which starts on 5/9/2009 at the Abu Dhabi Golf Club in Dubai.

- Xerox announced that it spent $145 million to buy COMDOC of Ohio, which was the largest independent Ricoh dealer in the U.S.

- Samsung announced that it is introducing its own management print services program, with its CEO predicting that by 2012 it will be the largest provider in the industry.

- Apparently, in an effort to grow marketshare, Toshiba is now supposedly allowing Kyocera to relabel three of its color laser MFPs. The new Kyocera TASKalfa 550C, 650C and 750C models are most likely relabeled Toshiba models. This is odd because:
- it will certainly cause issues in the Toshiba dealer community
- Toshiba itself relabels Ricoh color models

- Toshiba, using a $4.9 million tax break from North Carolina, announced it will open a project management office in the state for its nuclear plant technology division.

- While it sales declined, EFI, maker of Fiery controllers, announced a $26.7 million profit last quarter.

- In a survey of end users conducted by the Business Equipment Research & Testing Labs (BERTL), Kyocera won the award for most reliable b/w MFPs and printers.

- An analyst predicts that Hewlett Packard will move strong into the IT Services market. Gary Peterson, of GAP Intelligence, predicts that HP will use the profits from its printer division to fund its expansion into this other market.

- Hewlett Packard reported details on its last quarter’s financials:
- printer division, called Imaging & Printing Division (IPD) reported revenue fell 18% to $5.98 billion
- this group employs 2,000 people at its headquarters in San Diego, CA
- business printer sales fell 39%
- consumer printer sales fell 31%

- Hewlett Packard celebrated the 25th anniversary of its first b/w A4 laser printer, called simply “LaserJet”
- Introduced in 1984
- MSRP was $3495
- Weight of 70lbs.
- 300x300dpi
- 8ppm top speed

- Kodak, in a cost cutting move, announced it is closing its high-end digital camera plant in Israel, that was part of its Creo acquisition. The plant employed 50.

- Angelo Reid and Jameila Thane of Toronto, Canada were arrested when they were caught buying firearms using fake $50 bills they made on a color copier.

- A Texas jury handed down a $19 million verdict against Apple Inc., ruling that the company infringed on a patent related to predictive snooping technology, held by OPTi Inc.

- Seiko Epson, maker of Epson printers and MFPs, announced last quarter that it lost $1.1 billion.

- One dealer recruits from another. Randy Allen, former general sales manager of Datamax, is now VP of Marketing for ASI Business Solutions of Dallas, TX., a Lanier and HP dealer.

- Ingram Micro, a distributor of computer technology to VARs in the U.S., announced it is launching its own managed print services program, called “SEISMIC”. Unknown what software platform is being used.

- FMAudit, maker of managed print services software, announced it is moving to a larger headquarters in Jefferson City, MO.

-=Good Selling=-