MFP Weekend Industry Notes from 6/21/09

Special thanx to the Print4Pay Hotel member for this!

Okidata, maker of LED color printers and MFPs, announced that its managed print services program is called “Total Managed Print”.

Lyra Research Senior Analyst Cortney Kasuba will present “The Evolution of Managed Print Services: A Look Ahead” a the 2009 Managed Print Summit on 8/18/09 at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

Mark Robinett, owner of Robinett Copiers & Printers, a Konica Minolta dealer in Springfield, Missouri, has sold his business. After 28 years, he will move on to another career. The sale was caused by foreclosure proceedings ordered by Great Southern Bank, and assets were sold to Pearson-Kelly Office Products, a competitor.

Oce’ announced it will relabel more Konica Minolta devices. It will call the Konica Minolta bizhub C552 & C652 as the Oce VarioLink 5522c and 6522c.

Oce’ wins bid to provide production color system. Jeppesen Corp. has added an Oce’ ColorStream 10050 system. Details:
- company produces aviation charts for major airlines and private pilots
- 80% of work is b/w
- 20% is a mix of spot and process color
- Originally shop was offset presses only.
- First digital product was a continuous roll feed b/w production system from IBM (relabeled Hitachi)
- Then added a Hewlett Packard Indigo production color system
- 40% of total shop volume is now digital
- The 10050 system offers 5 colors of toner
- Brown used for contour mapping lines
- Magenta used to highlight important changes
- Cyan used for water
- CMYK used for images of landing approach pictures
- Uses primarily 40gsm paper

A company in Germany, and one in Switzerland claim that they have combined to create a new printing process. MDC Max Daetwyler, the Swiss firm and Interprint GmbH the German firm, sent out a press release claiming the invention of LaserSonic. They plan on showing the technology at the Interprint trade show in 2010, and claims it uses ink. They also claim it will print on paper, plastic or cardboard.

Sharp wins latest court battle against Samsumg. The court found that Samsung infringed on 4 patents Sharp owns regarding color LCD manufacturing.

Managed Print Services related statistics from DocuVision International:
- HP has placed over 100 million laser printers in the U.S.
- Copier makers have placed over 8 million copiers and MFPs
- Only 10% of office document hard costs can be attributed to document device and supply/service costs
- Other 90% is IT infrastructure, IT support, procurement, vendor administration, scanning labor,
storage labor, retrieval labor and distribution labor

Samsung sponsored survey reveals info on printer data security:
- Just under 50% of employees are exposed to sensitive data via prints left on exit tray
- 14% admitted seeing salary details
- 22% had seen performance reviews
- 34% had seen confidential correspondence
- 80% did not know that secure jobs could have been inadvertently stored on hard drive of printer of MFP
- 75% did not know that some printers could be hacked

Gartner stated its research showed the following about sales/shipments of printer/copier/MFP units in first quarter of 2009
- Decline of 18% worldwide to 26.4 million units
- Value of units declined 21% to $12.8 billion
- print only devices declined by 28% to 9.9 million units
- color laser MFPs sold 632,000 units
- color laser printers sales declined 15% to 1.4 million units
- b/w laser printer market grew 23% to 6.4 million units
- 14.6% decline in U.S.
- 22.6% decline in Canada
- End user spending in U.S. declined 21%
- Canon lost its marketshare leadership to HP
- inkjet printers declined by 15% in 2008 to 17.8 million units

InfoTrends released study of those who buy color inkjet wide format output, and if they felt it was effective at delivering message:
- 0.3% felt if was not effective
- 14.2% somewhat effective
- 30.1% undecided
- 17.5% extremely effective
- 37.9% somewhat effective

Police and Secret Service officials are on the lookout for someone in Arkansas who is making fake dollar bills on a color copier. Fake $20 and $100 bills have been discovered at local Burger King and Walmart.

FedEx reported first quarter financials for its FedEx Office division, formerly known as Kinko’s copy/print shops:
- 13% decline in revenue
- Decline in print and copy volume
- $810 goodwill impairment charge

After bad press from JP Morgan, Ricoh’s stock sank 5% to 1206 yen.

Riso launched a new high speed color inkjet MFP series:
- Replaces existing ComColor HC5500
- Still made by Olympus of Japan
- main print engine is 46” x 27” x 40”
- advertised as offering 2 cents per page color cost
- ink cartridge yield of 60,000 pages based on 5% fill per page
- ComColor 9050 features:
- top speed of 150ppm
- 300x300dpi (interpolated to 300x600dpi)
- 8.5” full color touch screen LCD control panel
- image area of 12 3/8” x 21 9/16” maximum
- max paper size of 13 3/8” x 21 5/8”
- handles up to 210gsm
- 8 gradations of ink coverage (3 bit?)
- auto duplex
- optional scanner for copying/scanning offers 40opm and 600dpi
- holds up to 100 originals
- 2 minute, 45 second warmup time
- 8 second warmup time
- uses Windows GDI (end user’s computer does the processing)
- Optional IS900C PostScript controller
- Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz processor
- 320GB hard drive
- 2GB RAM
- forms storage
- supports PPML variable data format
- can cluster up to 4 units
- auto stacking tray
- max duty cycle of 500,000 pages per month
- 3 paper drawers standard
- Optional finishing includes hole-punch, stapling, cover inserter and booklet making
- Optional envelope feeding kit
- ComColor 7010/7050 series:
- same as 9050 except only up to 120ppm
- 7010 has stack tray only, but 7050 also has three paper drawers
- 7050 can collate with finisher
- ComColor 3010/3050 series:
- same as 7010 except only up to 90ppm
- image area only 8 ¼” x 21 7/16”
- trays hold letter/legal size only
- 3050 comes with three paper drawers
- 3050 can collate

Memjet, the supposed high speed color inkjet technology of the future, launched a new website to prime the public for launch of its first product. Details:
- Based on 2500 patents from Kia Silverbrook of Australia
- Work started in 1994, but product has yet to ship
- Company claims that it has partners lined up to product color printers and floor-standing MFPs to compete with traditional color laser devices.
- Each printhead has 70,400 nozzles
- Each nozzle is 31.7 microns and uses only 170 nanojoules of electricity to heat ink
- Nozzle made with silicon nitride
- 1600x800dpi in top speed, 1600x1600dpi in half speed
- 900 million drops of ink per second
- Ink droplets are 1.4 picoliters in size
- Printhead is as wide as sheet of paper
- Unlike HP Edgeline, does not use drum to wrap paper around, or a fixing agent
- Uses water based inks for fast drying
- First product set to launch in late 2009 is an A4 size, 60ppm color printer with speed the same
regardless of ink coverage
- Also in the pipeline are a 60ppm and a 120ppm color MFPs


IKON, a division of Ricoh, announced it has launched the DocSend Server. Details:
- is made by EFI, and is also known as the SendMe technology
- hosted on centralized Windows server
- communicates with applications running on Ricoh MFP control panel
- scanned files converted into MS Word, MS Excel of PDF
- built-in OCR
- pricing not announced

Syratec Corp. of Cicero, NY, claims to have developed a new type of surge protector for copiers. The Innovolt Power Manager supposedly offers:
- LCD display
- Microprocessor diagnostics
- Fax modem protection
- Network RJ45 protection
- Quick check diagnostic summary
- Copier technician can download data from the device to a computer to diagnose power problems
- $100,000 machine replacement guarantee
- Pricing not announced

Hewlett Packard celebrated the 25th anniversary of its first laser printer. History includes:
- First unit actually made by Canon, who makes all HP laser printers sold today
- In 1984, the first model was the A4 size LaserJet 500, for $3495, offering 8ppm, with 128KM RAM and 8MHz processor
- In 1986, launched the LaserJet 500 Plus with two paper trays.
- In 1987, launched the LaserJet II, for $2495
- In 1988, launched the LaserJet IID, offering auto duplex
- In 1990, launched the LaserJet IIP, for $999
- In 1991, launched the JetDirect card, allowing LaserJet to connect to a network instead of a single PC
- In 1994, launched the LaserJet 4V, offering 11”x17” output
- In 1994, launched the Color LaserJet, actually made by Konica (now Konica Minolta)
- Claims to have sold 132 million laser printers since 1984.



-=Good Selling=-