Hewlett Packard loses one of its largest distributors in Australia, Phoenix Toner. The general manager, Don Bentley, stated; “The business didn’t want to have that amount of cash tied up in something that was not profitable”, referencing the HP printer supplies that it sold. The company will now concentrate on other brands.- Hewlett Packard has filed an injunction with the U.S. International Trade Commission in an attempt to bar Asian companies from importing print cartridges into the U.S. that violate HP’s patents and work with HP printers. The companies involved include Ninestar Technology of China, InkTec of South Korea and Acer of Taipei.
- Hewlett Packard announced a partnership with the University of Michigan to sell physical copies of over 500,000 rare books, while making digital versions available online for free. HP’s BookPrep service will take in raw scans of books, clean them up, and then offer print-on-demand copies for sale.
- MyFax Inc. announced that end users can download a free program that will allow anyone to fax from an application, using Internet Fax. The free software, MyFax Print-to-Fax Assistant, allows end users to Internet fax, by choosing Print from their application. End users must have an Interfax service, which MyFax can provide for a monthly subscription fee.
- Kofax, maker of document management software, announced that when businesses acquire a Fujitsu business scanner, they can get 50% off on Kofax Express software.
- Williams Lea announced it won a huge facilities management contract from Elizabeth Arden, a worldwide cosmetic company.
- A Chicago area man faces up to 20 years in prison for falsely claiming he was reselling high speed production print systems. Matthew Scott, owner of Gelsco Inc. of Northlake, Illinois, started as a printer repair company. However, in last 9 years Mr. Scott supposedly bilked 60 investors out of $28 million, claiming he was buying printers worth more than $100,000, and was able to resell them in under 90 days for 20% profit.
- A study conducted by Harris Interactive reveals that two out of three Americans prefer print media to email ads:
- 58% believe that the paperless office will never happen
- 64% prefer reading print on paper versus computer screen
- 67% would rather save money than save the environment
- 11% believe their company is now less likely to “be green”
- 26% say their company outsources print jobs at least once per year
- 19% say their company orders print over the Internet
- Kyocera announced two new options for its MFPs:
- ColorLock allows businesses to control color printing, achieved by offering a log-in screen that requests users to enter a passcode before they can use MFP, and allows color only to authorized users.
- AccessLock allows IT managers, through Microsoft Windows Active Directory, to set parameters to allow users access only to features need by their employee job functions
- Toshiba announced it is now reselling new solution software from Prism:
- deskRecord
- deskSystem
- deskForm
- Toshiba released its last quarter’s financials:
- Net loss of $2.2 million
- Sales fell 14%
- Will cut fixed costs by 10% on top of existing plan to cut 300 billion yen
- Will cut 3900 employees
- Will reduce research & development costs by 15%
- Will cut spending on equipment and factories by 59%
- Toshiba is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly trying to fix prices and rig bids for computer optical disk drives.
- Toshiba launched a new battery it hopes to be used in cell phones. The Dynario is palm sized, and uses a mixture of methanol and ambient oxygen. The chemical reaction between the two generates electricity.
- Lexmark announced it has hired former Ricoh executive, Ken Owen, as Value Print Channel Development Director. This new position’s goal is to increase channel awareness of Lexmark’s managed print services program.
- University researchers trying to find way to remove toner from paper. Thomas Counsell & Julian Allwood of the University of Cambridge, claim that when they expose a printed image to 60% demethylsulphoxide and 40% chloroform, followed by ultrasound, toner is removed, and paper is reusable.
- Athens-Clarke County police in Georgia are on the lookout for someone who is making fake $20 bills on a color copier. Most recently, the fake currency was used to buy Halloween figures from a local retailer.
- EFI announced that its products, including Fiery print servers and MicroPress print systems, would immediately support Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 7.
- EFI announced details on its last quarter’s financials:
- revenues of $100.9 million, down 30%
- net loss of $12.2 million
- net income of $1.2 million
- 22% growth in inkjet business
- Fiery revenue down 38% to $42 million
- Gross margin was down 57%
- EFI, in an effort to boost value of its stock, announced it will buy back $70 million worth of its shares.
- IDC announced that the enterprise publishing market (transpromo VDP production print) grew 8.3% in 2008, and “will continue to post strong growth over the next 5 years”.
- BEI, a company that tracks service data for copier dealers and market service management software, announced it has hired former Global/Xerox executive, Steve Rolla. Previous to Global, he was an executive with IKON.
- One leasing company buys another. EverBank Financial’s CEO Rob Clements, announced that the company acquired Tygris Commercial Finance Group. Purchase price not revealed.
- Another obscure company acquires patents and sues for licensing fees. St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants, of Michigan, is now suing Apple Computer as it claims the company is violating patents it owns regarding digital camera technology. The company already has won the following lawsuits:
- $25 million from Sony Corp.
- $34.7 million from Canon
- $3 million from Fuji
- Other deals were struck with HP, Kodak, Verizon, Motorola & Sanyo
- Red Bend Software Inc. of Israel, is suing Google for patent infringement, claiming that the company violated a patented algorithm in Google Chrome Web browser.
- A managed print services company gets purchased. MyPrint Corp. of Irvine, CA, announced that a majority interest in the company was purchased by Triton Pacific Capital Partners, a private equity firm in Los Angeles. MyPrint’s president, Jeff Carlson, stated; “We are all excited about the opportunities to work closely with the Triton Pacific team in growing MyPrint to the next level”
- Sanyo, which is about to become a part of Panasonic, announced it sold its battery plants to Fujitsu for $71 million.
- Sharp reported its latest financials:
- net loss of $196 million for first half of fiscal year
- operating profit fell 96.9%
- total revenue fell 17.5%
- copier sales revenue down 19.2%
- Kodak reported its last quarter’s financials:
- revenue fell 26%
- net loss of $111 million
- revenue in production print fell 18%
- Oce’ announced it sold a VarioPrint 6160 monochrome production print system & CS665 Pro color system (relabeled Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6501) to Fry Communications, a print shop in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. The equipment will be used to print variable data direct mail pieces.
- Oce’ announced that the president of its Production Printing Systems division, Mel Babolyian, was named to the board of directors of NPES, the association for suppliers of printing, publishing, and converting technologies.
- Konica Minolta is partnering with companies in Russia to develop nanotechnology. The partnership with Sun Innovations and RUSNANO Corp, will apparently use industrial inkjet printers to make special coatings for solar panels.
- The Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (JIDPO), has given Konica Minolta four “Good Design” awards for the bizhub C220, C280, C360, C452, C552, C652, PRO 1051 and PRO 1200.
- Whack an old printer for a dollar. Students, faculty and staff at Purdue University were given the chance to use a sledgehammer to smash an old printer to raise money for the computer graphics department.
- The Equipment Leasing and Finance Association (ELFA), which tracks lending practices, stated that equipment leasing revenue fell 30.9% in September from the same month in the previous year to $4.7 billion. This is because of increase in delinquencies.
- Image Print & Sign Ltd. of New Zealand was fined by local government for illegally making copies of copyrighted books.
- PrintFleet is partnering with De Lage Landen in Europe to help copier dealers sell managed print services with a cpc lease program.
- In a survey of independent copier dealer service managers, Office Products Analysts found:
- average scanned pages per month on a scan-enabled MFP is 3,000 pages per month
- favorite brand based on reliability was Kyocera
- 54% admitted that they use Non factory original parts when they fix their copiers in the field
- 52% admitted that they provide their customers with Non factory original toner
-=Good Selling=-
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