Sunday, January 10, 2010

MFP Weekend Industry Notes from 1/8/10


Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Sharp announced it has renewed its lease on a 500,000 square foot office/warehouse in southeast Memphis, TN. Pricing unknown.

Sharp announced it would open up a factory direct branch in Mexico City, Mexico.

- Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from a healthcare firm in Connecticut. Details:
- Contract included Capella Technologies FormPort Server software that generates forms for
Healthcare industry
- Contract included 65 HP LaserJet devices
- Average volume per device of 5,000 to 6,000 per month
- Grove Hill Medical Center, has more 70 physicians, and replaced over 100 dot matrix printers.

- In 2000, Xerox & Kodak combined employed 38,750 workers in Rochester, NY area. Now the total is 15,430.

- Big fight over a facilities management contract in California between HP and Xerox:
- California Department of Health Care Services announced its intent to award the $1.4 billion Medi-Cal contract to Xerox, to its ACS division (which it just acquired for $6.4 billion)
- The contract is for 10 years, and was previously held by Hewlett Packard (which gained the contract when it acquired EDS two years ago)
- The contract handles $19 million in medical claims from 7 million beneficiaries
- The bid contract is 40,000 pages long
- “We’re very disappointed with the decision. We’re in the process of reviewing the document before we determine our next step”, said Bill Ritz, spokesperson for HP.
- HP current employs 2,000 in California to fulfill the contract.

- Xerox announced it would layoff 181 employees in its ACS call center in Houston, TX due to lack of work.

- Xerox’s ACS division announced it won a five year, $72 million contract from DCP Midstream, an energy company in Denver. The contract includes desktop support, network services, messaging, document management, IT security and managed print services.

- Copytronics Information Systems announced it won a 5 year contract that includes 320 copiers to Volusia County, Florida.

- The Kansas City, MO ethics committee was appointed to investigate elected Kansas City officials in regards to a copier contract:
- Reams of depositions from a Jackson County Circuit Court case are being forwarded to the committee
- City Attorney Galen Beaufort said the depositions being forwarded are from the lawsuit filed by copier dealer, Perfect Output LLC, against the city and the winning bidder, Ricoh Business Systems.
- The suit alleges that Ricoh wrongly interfered in the city’s decision making.
- The city auditor’s office issued a report concluding that the selection criteria was biased and that the actions of an unnamed City Council member may have tainted the process.

- IKON, a division of Ricoh, lost employee to solutions vendor. Scott Robinson was named Senior Account Manager of TERIS, in its San Diego office, which specializes in litigation support services for law firms.

- Recent statistics on the print for pay industry from American Printer magazine:
- Web printers run their presses an average of 5.2 days per week in 2009
- More than half of printshop owners expect paper prices to increase in 2010.
- 33% of printshop owners are concerned about success of Amazon Kindle electronic book’s effect on reducing need for book printing.
- 23% feel that the biggest issue is improving the front end link from customer to prepress department
- 51% believe that digital toner presses threaten web offset print volumes
- 61% state that their customers are printing less direct mail pieces due to higher postal costs
- 90% of end users who receive bills in mail open them. In contrast, if they receive bill via email, only 72% open the email.
- 32% plan on acquiring a new digital toner press in 2010.

- Fujitsu announced it would start a managed print services program in Japan, called “Workplace LCM Service”. Unknown if it will launch similar program in the U.S.

- 1,200 workers at Fujitsu’s offices in England went on strike to protest changes in their pension plans.

- A company that provides outsourced CRM and call center work, announced it is entering the copier services market. Service USA, headquarters in Leawood, Kansas, claims it will offer:
- maintain and repair copiers and printers
- automated customer and field service systems
- covers equipment in commercial locations like grocery and convenience store chains
- deploys technicians nationwide to provide install, maintenance and repair

- LG Electronics, Panasonic and Sony apparently showed prototype 3D, high definition flat screen televisions at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. DirecTV also announced it will launch a 3D satellite channel in 2010. The goal is to convince all owners of HDTV flat screens to upgrade to 3DTV units in next couple of years.

- Japan’s prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, apparently expressed interest in relaxing nuclear technology export restrictions. (This would undoubtedly help Toshiba Corp, which is betting big on expansion of worldwide nuclear plant construction)

- Better Buys For Business magazine gave out Editors Choice awards to the following Konica Minolta color MFP models:
- bizhub C280
- bizhub C360
- bizhub C452
- bizhub C552
- bizhub C652

-=Good Selling=-

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