MFP Weekend Industry Notes 8/09/09

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8-9-09

Toshiba’s president, Norio Sasaki, stated the following during a press briefing in Tokyo:
- It plans on coming out of the downturn by expanding its energy, healthcare and
environment-related businesses
- Expects its nuclear plant division to be its most profitable division by 2012
- Nuclear energy expansion “will provide a basis for strong growth”
- Predicts this division will bring it $3.7 billion in profit by 2012
- Will cut fixed costs by 330 billion yen this year
- Will cut spending in research & development in other business units to 1 trillion yen
from 1.17 trillion yen
- cut its profit forecast from $5.2 billion to $2.6 billion for the year
- cuts its sales estimates by 25% to 7.5 trillion yen
- posted a record 343.6 billion yen net loss last fiscal year
- it expects orders for 39 nuclear reactors by 2015
- “the results in fiscal year 2008 were dreadful”
- “starting with restoring the capital base, we aim to transform ourselves into a
company with a solid financial footing to start again for further growth”

Toshiba won a $116 million bid to supply two steam turbine engines for a coal plant in Vietnam.

During its 2009 Regional Summit, Toshiba’s President & COO, Mark Mathews announced:
- its managed print program is now 6 years old
- has 1 billion pages per month in its MPS program.
- Announced that Toshiba has entered into a “Strategic Agreement” with Hewlett Packard, apparently allowing it access to Hewlett Packard printers and MFPs (branches and dealers may now start marketing HP products in addition to Toshiba products)
- MPS program is called “Encompass 3.0” and is run by Jon Hafey,
Director Program Management & Service Delivery

Comdoc, a dealer in Ohio recently acquired by Xerox, announced it won a $80,000 bid to supply document management for Dimension Service Corp, a warranty company, who supposedly was spending $240,000 per year on outsourced scanning/storage services for 80,000 documents per month. The solution included 5 Kodak desktop scanners and DocuWare software, according to Director of Sales, Dan Nihiser.

Sandy Jones and Nicole Moses were arrested in New Hampshire after allegedly making fake currency using a color copier. Both women were arrested after they use a fake $50 bill to buy lottery tickets.

Heidelberg is apparently working on a high speed color inkjet production print system. The company has invested in inkjet printhead maker, Spectra, and plans to launch a new product named Linoprint.

Forrester Research predicts the following marketing methods will see increases:
- social media = 34%
- mobile marketing = 27%
- display advertising = 17%
- search marketing = 15%
- email marketing = 11%

Hewlett Packard announced it now has a total of 5,000 Indigo production color systems installed worldwide. The product was first shipped in 1993, when Indigo was an independent company, before it was acquired by HP in 2002 for $800 million. According to InfoTrends, the supply cost per page on the new Indigo 7000 is only 2 cents.

Hewlett Packard announced it plans on launching “Cloud-Print”. This service will allow end users to print from their Blackberry device to any printer connected to the Internet. Launch date and cost unknown.

Kodak announced it has sold a NexPress S2500 production color system to a print shop in Italy named Grafostampa.

The U.S. Postal Service, despite implementing $6 billion in cost cutting measures, announced it will still lose a whopping $2.4 billion. It now has reported a loss for 11 of the last 12 quarters.

EFI announced that since it offered its version 5.0 of Fiery Command WorkStation free upgrade, that 10,000 users have downloaded the software.

Printable Technologies, maker of the popular FusionPro variable data software, announced a record quarter for sales and profits.

According to WhatTheyThink.com, commercial printing shipments were down 12.2%, and printing volume was down 9.7%.

InfoTrends released the following list of top features for production print systems:
- Overall fastest system is the Kodak Versamark VX5000 color inkjet system at 750 feet per minute
- Fastest cut sheet toner system in the Hewlett Packard Indigo 7000 at 120ppm
- Fastest cut sheet color inkjet system is the Riso HC5500 at 120ppm
- Fastest color MFP is the Ricoh Aficio Color MP7500 at 75ppm
- Largest cut sheet paper capability is the Xerox iGen4 at 14.33” x 22.5”
- Longest image possible is the color LED Punch Graphix Xeikon 8000
which is unlimited with rolls of paper
- Most flexible cut sheet media handling is the NexPress from 16lb. bond to 130lb. cover
- Most flexible roll fed media handling is the Punch Graphix Xeikon 8000 from 27lb. text to 122lb. cover

Epson has filed patent infringement suit against a company in California who refills Epson print cartridges. Green Project Inc. of Hacienda Heights, filed a countersuit claiming it is doing nothing wrong.

Great America Leasing announced that it has hired famous sales training author, Steven Power, to provide training to dealers who plan to succeed in managed print services.

- Kyocera announced version 5.0 of its KYOcapture option for its MFPs:
- Actually is a relabeled version of Notable Solutions Inc. (NSI) AutoStore software
- Has customizable user interface
- Software is loaded onto customer’s server
- Provides a document capture workflow solution
- Improved bi-directional search functionality
- Retrieve indexing data from databases
- Browse folders across network

Kyocera announced that it is partnering with Wells Fargo and GreatAmerica to provide leasing options for its dealers.

Kyocera announced that in the U.S., it has shipped just over 1800 of the new TASKalfa color MFPs. It claims that the TASKalfa name will be on 23 different MFP and printer models.

Creo print servers received accolades from the International Cooperation for the Integration of the Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4) organization, as achieving the highest level of connectivity to third party workflow solutions. CIP4 measures vendor’s compatibility with the new Job Definition Format, or JDF standards.

EFI announced results of its second quarter’s financials:
- Total revenue of $90.1 million compared with $143.8 million last year
- GAAP net loss was $13.3 million
- GAAP net income was $13.4 million
- 14% growth in inkjet business
- Operating expenses reduced by 22%

Sharp announced it will hold its next dealer meeting during week of 8/31/09 at the Gaylord Resort in Washington D.C.

Okidata announced that it is replacing its CEO of its North American division. Out is Stewart Krentzman, after 12 years with the company. He is replaced by Takabumi Asahi from Japan.

Okidata announced it will offer PrintFleet managed print service software to its dealers.

-=Good Selling=-