MFP Weekend Industry Notes 7/13/09

Special thanx to the Print4Pay Hotel members that provide this information!:

Consortium Holdings, a financial firm, has lured Craig Fielding, formerly a senior manager at Xerox, to become its new CEO.

In a book authored by Scott D. Anthony, called “The Silver Lining”, he states that in the 1950s, IBM turned down the chance to buy the copier patent portfolio from Xerox Corp. IBM hired a consultant named Arthur D. Little, who informed the company that even if it replaced 100% of the carbon paper market with the copy process, it still would not make enough money to justify the acquisition of the patents.

Another lawsuit over a copier lease. In Pennsylvania, Erie County was sued by its supplier, Details:
- In April, auditors claimed that the bid award was flawed because criteria for winning bidder was changed during process
- The review was requested after dealer sued county for $1.3 million and billed county for $1 million
- Auditors claimed that the dealer overcharged the county
- Also claimed that the county owed the dealer between $600,000 and $800,000
- Lawsuit was settled for $600,000 paid to dealer by county

One Managed Print Services software provider buys its competitor. FMAudit announced that it has acquired DocuAudit.

Apple Computer is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, over whether it was completely honest about the health condition of its CEO, Steve Jobs, who recently took a 5.5 month medical leave, and had a liver transplant.

IKON’s former CFO, Bob Woods, was named to the board of directors for Insight Enterprises, a large computer distributor in Arizona.

Oce’ announced it will hold a large production print show in Seattle in July. Guest speakers will be professors from local university.

Symcor, a print for pay in Toronto, Canada, announced it had purchased the Oce JetStream 1500 high speed color inkjet system for variable data applications.

Okidata announced it will reorganize its management team in the U.S.:
- Jim Hargadon is Advisor, Finance & Admin
- Mick Takahara is Advisor, Corporate Planning
- Kazutaka Onodera is Executive VP and CFO
- Stewart Krentzman is President and CEO
- Scott Becker is Executive VP of Sales & Marketing

Okidata announced it will buy a manufacturing plant in Takasaki, Japan from Renesas Technology, so it can increase its capacity to build LED color print engines. The company plans on doubling its sales by 2011. Purchase price unknown.
The Gartner Group released details on its study of document management systems:
- 75% of enterprises that establish an enterprise integrated document management plan will use a steering committee
- 65% of the startup costs will be spent on planning and development
- Enterprises that do not bring content under control, wasted work time will increase by 30% to 40%
- Office workers waste at least 10 hours per week managing documents
- Average document is copied 9 to 11 times at a cost of $18
- Documents cost about $20 to file
- Retrieving a misfiled document costs $120

Billback, LLC of Australia purchased nQueue, to create nQueue Billback, LLC. These two former competitors both make copier/print accounting systems, and will be led by CEO, Rick Hellers. The new company’s primary competitor is Equitrac.

Kofax, maker of scanning solutions, announced it won a $350,000 contract from EDCO Group, which is a business processing outsource provider of health document management services.

Canon launched a new A4 desktop color laser MFP, the imageCLASS MF8350 series, featuring top speed of 21ppm b/w or color, using 4 tandem OPC drum design. The engine most likely is same as that used in current Hewlett Packard CM2320 color lasers, as they are all made by Canon, and sell for as little as $599. The new imageCLASS MF8050 offers 8ppm color and 12ppm b/w.

Canon’s Satoshi Victi stated that thanks to the company’s investment in 3D modeling software in its research & development labs, it now only takes 3 months to design a new product.

According to Industry Analysts, the use of generic/non OEM parts and supplies by copier dealers is on the rise. This means that the usage of original parts and supplies made by the actual copier/printer manufacturers ii on the decline. The research group claims:
- over 60% of dealers use non OEM parts and supplies
- 13% of all supplies bought by dealers are non OEM
- Managed print service programs are driving the increase
- Kyocera is trying to stop this trend by telling its dealers that its 3 year warranty is void if they use non OEM parts and supplies
- Dealers may be spending as much as $600 million on non OEM supplies
- Many question the quality of the non OEM product. For example, one vendor, Katun, stated “Katun color toners were developed to meet business color end user expectations, where precise color matching is NOT a prerequisite”

Search engine giant, Google, announced its intention to launch its own operating system to compete against Microsoft, called “Chrome”. To retaliate, Microsoft stated it plans on launching its own search engine, called “Bing”.

Sharp announced it is now offering an embedded version of Print Audit software for its OSA equipped MFPs. Details:
- tracks print/copy/scan/fax
- rules feature that limits jobs based on user
- cost assignment by job and/or user

GreenPrint is shipping version 2.0 of its cost saving software. Details:
- Founded by Hayden Hamilton and James Kellerman in May, 2005
- Software prevents unwanted pages from being printed, such as; stray lines at end of web document, boilerplate at end of airplane ticket, blank PowerPoint slides, etc.
- Based in Portland, Oregon
- 168,000 end users have tried free version of software
- Only 25,000 end users are using it daily
- Version 2.0 is chargeable version for corporate users
- First sale was made to Asian company with 50,000 licensed users
- Next planned install is HSBC Bank
- Xerox is giving away the software for free with Phaser color wax printers
- Company now has 28 employees
- Version 2.0 cost is $70 per user

In Malaysia, police confiscated 25 kilograms of heroin found inside boxes of copier paper in an office supply truck attempting to load it onto an airplane.