Copier & MPS Industry Fighting Over the "Last Sheet of Paper"?

The Copier industry continues to evolve, and it seems all of the major manufacturers or at least most of them are making the necessary changes to become more than a "copier manufacturer".  If you're an avid reader of the industry blogs, and articles many pundits are predicting the doom and gloom of ink and paper.  I'm told and I've read that the next generation of office workers won't require paper, copiers, printers, fax machines or scanners. The next generation of office workers will be paperless.....due to Andriod Smart Phones and the proliferation of Apple IPADs and related tablet devices.  There's a great article here from my pals at gap intelligence.

But just recently there seems to be a war of the words, a recent article by Lou Slawetsky, CEO, Industry Analysts, Inc stated this "What happened? Managed print (or, MPS, or MDS, or OPS, or etc.) was to have been the strategy off the millennium. A market with a triple digit growth rate. The ability to lock in your account for three to five years. Gross margins of more than 50%. A natural conduit for the placement of MFPs supplied by your primary vendor. A continuous revenue stream. A stepping stone leading from managed print (or managed printers) to managed IT services. Easy sales, huge upside. Sales reps love the comp plan. MPS is a great plan that benefits both the dealer and the imaging system vendor."  you can read the rest of Lou words of wisdom here.

Personally, we had a poll running on the Print4Pay Hotel forums for about a year.  The Poll asked dealers if  "You're now selling Managed Print Services "Your Thoughts Now".   Almost 70% responded that they were not happy with the profits and or if they had to do it over again, they would not.  I just thought I'd get this out there while we transition to what I read today.

Today, saw a blog post from Ken Stewart titled The Six Promises of MPS on MPS Insights.  Ken states "While I can attest to the fact that the thorns of learning a new business model can be quite painful, all indicators point to one simple truth: MPS is a business model proven to be successful by many providers".  But even more interesting is the statement that "MPS can be used at the core stepping stone to IT related services".  I agree, the company I work although we are not really and MPS provider however we a re making the transition to IT Managed Services.

Here's what I see...paper will not just go away, I do believe that the general office use of bond paper will decline, but I also believe that niche Color Printers/MFP's and Imaging Presses will become more prevalent in the future.  These niche systems will allow for these Color Printers/MFP's to print on a wider variety of media, thus allowing more companies than ever  to be more creative with  printing smaller runs of customized marketing materials. I also believe that there are still many pages/clicks to be captured by Color Printers/MFP's. Take a trip to Relyco's web site and there's a treasure trove of medias that will work with Color Printers/MFp's.

Does it seems like we're all fighting for the last few  sheets of paper? Will paper go away, yup. Are the predictions of doom and gloom for paper premature, yup. 

-=Good Selling=-

Daily MFP Industry Notes from around the World

This will be a first and I'll see if I have the time to keep it up.

News from around the MFP world today!

The state of Florida is projected to save up to $15 million and streamline its communications systems with a statewide email service provided by ACS, A Xerox Company. 

For the first time, all Florida state agencies will use the same email system, eliminating 30 separate systems. It is also the first statewide private cloud email solution using Microsoft Exchange 2010, which has the security to be compliant with HIPAA and Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) standards and the scalability so the state can make the solution available to local government agencies.

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Kyocera Mita India, a subsidiary of USD 12 billion Japanese Kyocera Group, on Tuesday announced the acquisition of the copier division of Kilburn Office Automation (KOAL) for an undisclosed amount.

finish reading here

Last Week in Copier "Industry Notes" 11/7/10

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-The Secret Service claims that it has pulled $182 million in fake bills from circulation in 2009, more than double the $79 million it pulled in 2008. Almost 62% of this counterfeit U.S. currency was made using color MFPs

- Okidata now shipping new desktop A4 b/w MFPs that it is sourcing from Lexmark. The new B700 series are actually based on the Lexmark X650 series, which offer a large 9” touch screen color LCD control panel.
o Speeds range from 42ppm to 52ppm
o Base MSRPs range form $625 to $1249
o (so while Okidata touts its own LED technology in its color engines as superior to laser, it uses Lexmark laser engines for its b/w products)

- The Flagstaff, AZ fire department reported that a fire in the University of Northern Arizona Student Union was caused by an overheating copier.
- Fuji announced it has opened a new research and development lab for printing technology, called the R&D Square in Yokohama, Japan. Other details mentioned:
o In 1985 is made its first laser printer for relabeling by other vendors
o In 1986, launched first printer that it marketed on its own, called the Fuji Xerox 4105
o In 2001, purchased laser printer business from NEC Corp.
o Its other R&D lab for printers is the Ebina Center in Kanagawa, Japan
o Tadahito Yamamoto is President and Representative Director
o Has developed new technology called “SLED”
o SLED is “Self-scanning Light Emitting Device”
 features an electronic pulse each time the opening is only one point of light-emitting LED light, LED light points, one by one, move to the front.
 A line of LED light-emitting operations signal to control an input.
 Each SLED chip has a total of 57 LEDs
 In conventional LED printer, to offer up to 1200dpi, it needs to double the drive chip and twice the signal line, but the multi-chip Fuji ASIC drive can operate 14, 592 light points
 Traditional LED technology print images with color transitions that are not natural

- FMAudit of Jefferson City, Missouri, announced version 3.2 of its managed print services software, that it claims has 180 new features.

- Sharp announced it paid $305 million to complete acquisition of Recurrent Energy of San Francisco, which develops solar projects. (however, the company apparently still has not yet spend any R&D for production print products for its copier dealers and branches to sell)

- Sharp’s VP of Marketing, Mike Marusic, gave out more details on the design of the document feeders on its new Frontier “Scan-Centric” series of color and b/w A4 MFPs:
o Color version has base MSRP of $8945
o b/w version has base MSRP of $5695
o Top print speed of 40ppm
o Ruggedized rubber feed tires that can handle thicker card stock
o Rollers can also handle the raised letter of plastic credit cards or ID cards
o Cards pass straight through to the other side of the document feeder (unlike when feeding normal paper originals) so the cards are not bent or damaged
o Viable alternative to production scanners

- Sharp gave out details of its last quarter’s financials:
o Company slashed its full year profit projection by 20%
o Warned of “increasingly severe business condition”
o Net profit of $175.2 million for last 6 months
o Revenue up 16.7% to 1.5 trillion yen
o For full fiscal year expects net profit of 30 billion yen
o Big decline in demand for large size color LCDs
o No mention made of its office equipment division

- Digitex Corp, a Canon/Ricoh dealer owned by Mark Kinley in Houston, has purchased Capco Systems, another Canon dealer in Houston. Capco was previously owned by Constantine Pontikes, and was originally named Houston Typewriter.

- According to some authors, Google Docs will soon have a new feature that will allow users to print documents to any Internet-connected printer, anywhere in the world. For it to work, users will have to install small piece of software on a computer that’s on the same network as the printer. The computer has to be turned on and connected to the Internet for the print service to work.

- Microsoft launched a beta version of Microsoft Office 365, which is a cloud based package that offers a complete set of business functions.

- Artifex Software Corp., maker of print drivers, announced version 9.0 of its Ghostscript drivers featuring:
o PostScript Level 3 compatibility
o PDF 1.7
o PCL 5e, 5c & XL
o Microsoft XPS
o PostScript to PDF conversion
o XPS to PDF conversion
o ICC based color rendering workflow
o Stores two separate color space settings
o Support for optional content to the PDF interpreter
o Claims to have 100 OEM customers

- Scan capture software maker, Kofax, reported that last quarter it had revenue of $216 million, which was up 27%. (Kofax is very popular in the healthcare market, and its leading reseller is IKON/Ricoh)

- Kodak was ordered by government in England to pull its TV ads claiming that its color inkjet printers would save end users money as compared with using other brands. The agency claims that the Kodak ads were misleading.

- eCareme Technologies Inc. announced it will launch a cloud printing service that will allow end users to send their print jobs to any 7-ELEVEN store in Taiwan that has a connected MFP. Pricing not announced.

- Ricoh announced it will provide 32 MFPs and printers for the upcoming Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Yokohama, Japan.

- Ricoh announced the launch of “Ricoh intelligent invoicing” or i-invoicing, which allows customers to outsource the receipt and production of all invoices to Ricoh. Ricoh claims that this will save customers 70-90% using the system. The initial launch will only be in Europe.

- Ricoh announced it is the “Official Document Solutions Partner” for the Philadelphia Eagles football team.

- Lexmark, whose CEO last week announced his is departing, now announced that it is combining its laser and inkjet divisions into one, called Imaging Solutions and Services or ISS, led by Executive VP, Marty Canning, reporting to new CEO, Paul Rooke.

- Business Research & Testing Laboratories (BERTL) gave out Fall 2010 Best Awards to:
o HP LaserJet PRO P1606dn b/w laser printer
o Ricoh InfoPrint 1357EX b/w production print system
o Sharp MX-M753N b/w laser MFP
o Kyocera Copystar FS2026/C2126/FS3040/3140 MFPs
o Konica Minolta bizhub C35 A4 color MFP
o Ricoh Aficio MP 4001/5001 b/w MFPs
o Xerox 7755/7775 MFPs

- Former IKON executive, Jim Gallagher, was hired as VP of Sales for McGrath Systems, a human capital management firm.

- Hewlett Packard sold an Indigo 7500 production color system to Group Momentum, a printshop in Sydney, Australia. It also sold an Indigo 5500 to ASAP Digital of Sheffield, England.

- Apple sued Motorola, alleging that the company’s smartphone lineup and operating system it sues infringe on iPhone patents.

- Kyocera (aka Kyoto Ceramic Company) announced it will buy the Software Engineering division of Epson in the Philippines. This office employs 70, and currently writes software for Epson printers and MFPs.

- Hitachi announced it has developed a new continuous inkjet print head technology, called “RX”

-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Copiers "Industry Updates" 10/24/10

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- Hewlett Packard sued by some of its shareholders. The lawsuit claims that HP permitted or encouraged illegal kickbacks and bribes to government agencies to win bids. In August, HP had agreed to pay a $55 million fine to settle a U.S. Justice Dept. probe over alleged bribery.
- Hewlett Packard announced it would hire 2,000 workers in Bulgaria for a development and support center.
- Hewlett Packard announced it had completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of ArcSight, maker of security software.

- Hewlett Packard, at its Innovation Summit in Singapore, announced that it will offer Toshiba MFPs to its managed print services customers in Asia/Pacific region. HP already is offering Canon MFPs in the U.S. Unknown if HP will offer Toshiba MFPs in the U.S.
- Hewlett Packard announced it has appointed Gail Galuppo as new Senior VP of Worldwide Strategy & Marketing for the printer/MFP division. Ms. Galuppo was hired from Western Union, and will work from San Diego office, reporting to Vyomesh Joshi, executive VP.

- Hewlett Packard is threatening to cancel a large number of resellers for failing to sell enough HP maintenance and warranty service contracts (HP CarePacks), according to Computer Resellers News magazine.
- Hewlett Packard won a managed print services contract from large law firm, Allens Arthur Robinson:

o locations across Asia and Australia

o 3 year contract

o Also includes document management system (DMS)

o Replaced 408 printers with 206 MFPs

o Reduced page volume from 61 million pages to 24 million

o Claims will reduce costs by $3 million over life of contract

o Help desk calls about printer/MFP issues down from 30% of total to 3%

o Attorneys no longer have a personal printer

- EFI announced a new version of PrintMe, that will allow users of Apple iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Google Android cell phones to print to an Internet enabled device.
- In a surprise move, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, announced he is leaving the company.
- Adobe announced it will ship a new version of Acrobat software, called Acrobat X, featuring:

o rebuilt scanning and OCR engine

o scanned files are 50% smaller

o automatic color and grayscale detection

o uses OCR software from IRIS of Belgium

o integration with MS SharePoint

o ability to export files to MS Word or MS Excel

o basic commenting functionality
- CVision of Queens, New York, announced it won research grants from the National Science Foundation to develop new JBIG compression technology to increase speed of OCR scanning. The company’s goal is to allow copier companies to have built-in OCR that can make a searchable PDF as fast as the copier’s scan speed.
- Sharp announced it will scale back its laptop computer operations and instead focus on making the new Sharp Galapagos tablet PC. Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported that Sharp will cease all PC desktop and laptop manufacturing due to declining sales.
- Loffler Companies, a Konica Minolta dealer in Minnesota, was named to the prestigious Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the U.S.
- Ricoh announced that it is now on the Premier Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) contract, to enable its branches, IKON and dealers to market to member healthcare facitlities.
- Samsung of Korea filed suit against Panasonic over patents in the manufacture of secure digital memory cards.

- IKON/Ricoh and GE Capital were sued in Florida. Apparently, customer Kenneth Hackett & Associates is trying to get out of their lease due to a dispute over click charges.
- Kodak an acquisition target? That is the opinion recently published by George Conboy, President of Brighton Securities.
- Brainware Inc. of Ashburn, Virginia, announced contract wins for its Intellicapture scan capture software:

o Will be relabeled by Oracle as Oracle Forms Recognition

o Installs include:

 NEC Europe

 Mueller Industries

 Lafarge

 Rabobank

 Cook’s Childrens Hospital

 Resurrection Healthcare

 Gilead Healthcare

 Gunderson Lutheran Healthcare

 Mayo Clinic

- Canon announced that so far this year, it has planted 38,000 trees in the U.S. as part of its Generation Green Program. Canon makes the donation for every qualifying imageRUNNER MFP sold.
- Jefferson Parish School Board of New Orleans was sued by CIT Leasing for failing to make payments on its copier lease. The 5 year lease started on 6/15/2006.
- Carr Business Systems, a dealer owned by Xerox/Global in New York, announced it won a contract as a preferred office equipment supplier for the members of the Greater New York Home Furnishing Association.
- MGI of Australia announced it sold a Meteor DP60 Pro digital color system to JP Graphics, a printshop in Appleton, WI.
- Kyocera (Kyoto Ceramic Company) announced it will sponsor the Anderson Cooper 360 show on CNN cable TV.
- Toshiba announced it will resell the new 700 and 7100 wide format b/w systems from KIP.
- Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, announced the next version of Macintosh computer operating system will be called Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
- Gregory Lavallo and Amelia Abdulmagid were arrested for using a color copier to make fake $100 bills in Amsterdam.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Industry Notes from Around the World!

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- Intel announced it is spending $1.4 billion to buy Infineon, maker of wireless network technology, which is found in Apple products.

- Adobe announced it will partner with Monotype Imaging to provide print drivers to MFP and printer makers. The two companies will offer a package that includes PCL, PostScript and XPS drivers, to compete against other makers like Global Graphics & Zoran.

- Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from AIB in Ireland.

o 5 year contract

o Reduced fleet from one device for every 4 employees to one for every 12

o Included MFPs and LaserJet 4250dtn and Color LaserJet 4700dtn laser printers

o Included SafeCom solution to allow ID card readers on devices for authentication

o Claims to have reduced operating costs from 20-30%

- Hewlett Packard is sued. About 1 year ago, HP announced a partnership with large commercial printer, R.R. Donnelley, to develop variable data technologies. Now R.R. Donnelley has filed a lawsuit against HP over alleged patent violations, claiming that the violations are “willful and deliberate.”

- Hewlett Packard is fighting a claim by security firm, Zscaler Labs, that hackers can use the Webscan feature to capture images from documents that are left in Hewlett Packard scanners and MFPs that have an embedded Web server. Michael Sutton of Zscaler Labs claims that he was able to find many HP scanners on the Internet.

- Hewlett Packard announced it sold an Indigo 7000 production color system to Color By, a printshop in Italy.

- Hewlett Packard agreed to pay $55 million to settle claims it paid kickbacks so companies would recommend its products to U.S. government agencies.

- Hewlett Packard announced it won an $800 million bid to provide laptops and desktop PCs to U.S. Air Force.

- Hewlett Packard won a bidding war against Dell over both companies’ attempt to buy 3PAR Corp., which make data storage technology for cloud computing. HP will pay $2.1 billion for the firm. Details on 3PAR:

o founded 11 years ago by former Sun Microsystems employees

o original stock price was $10 per share, but sold at $33 per share

o the letters “P”, “A” and “R” stand for names of three founders

o based in Fremont, CA

o 670 employees

- Hewlett Packard announced study by BLI that apparently shows end users will have less print quality and service issues if they use official HP ColorLok paper with their color laser devices. Using ColorLok paper supposedly will lead to 4 times fewer faults and more than 4 times fewer paper path obstructions.

- IBM Corp. has beat a breach of contract lawsuit that accused the company of shorting a current sales rep on a commission he claimed he was owed in connection with a $3.8 million in licensing feeds Motorola Corp. paid IBM for software patents.

- IBM claims it has developed the world’s fastest microprocessor chip, running at 5.2GHz.

- Epson is fighting to keep an internal report private in a lawsuit. Apparently it was released by a disgruntled former executive, and may detail a misrepresentation of the quality of Epson inkjet cartridges.

- International Data Corporation (IDC) gave out it findings of worldwide market sales of printers and MFPs in last quarter:

o Includes inkjet and laser devices, from desktop to printshop

o total market grew 20%

o 29 million units shipped

o Total value increased by 14% to $13.3 billion

o B/w laser MFPs grew 39.7% (the first time that b/w had more growth than color)

o Color laser MFPs grew 33%

o HP shipped 2.8 million laser units, and 11.9 units total including inkjet

o Samsung color laser MFPs grew 55% to 108,731 units

o Samsung b/w laser MFPs grew 54% to 500,777 units

o 9 million total laser based units shipped

o 66% of market belonged to inkjet technology (primarily home use devices)

o Inkjet grew 14% to 19 million units

o 78% of inkjet units were MFPs

o In U.S., total shipments grew 14.4%

- Ricoh announced it sold an Aficio PRO C720s production color system to Noel-Baker School and Language College in England.

- Kodak announced a new solution partnership for its high speed scanners. The Kodak scanners, with the optional Kodak Capture Pro Software, now integrates with CAPSYS CAPTURE to create workflows for document management systems.

- In a study of 410 small companies conducted by 1&1 Internet Ltd:

o 37% reported that money is lost from employees failing to share updated versions of documents

o 53% are held back by poor archiving of emails and documents

o 59% of business owners are unable to amend documents when they are off premises

o Over half of business owners believe that their staff is wasting money with excessive printing

- IT departments across the country are facing a looming Microsoft Windows 7 migration deadline, as support for Windows XP will end in 4 years. Gartner study shows:

o Many are starting their migrations at end of 2010

o IT budgets will need to increase between 20% to 60% to accommodate the updates

o Cost of IT labor will also increase

o Estimated migration cost per PC will be between $1205 and $1999

o Capital costs account for 60% of total replacement cost

o Average business will have to replace 25% of its PC early

- The Marin County Board of Supervisors of California voted to stop the implementation of an SAP project, and admitted to wasting over $30 million when it awarded the SAP project to Deloitte Consulting. Marin County has sued Deloitte to get its money back.

- Worldox, maker of document management systems (DMS) to the legal industry, announced it won a contract from Hoskin, Farina & Kampf, a law firm in Colorado. Total cost = $32,975.00

- Microsoft was forced to apologize to attendees of a tradeshow in Australia. The company had hired female models for its booth, but apparently was unaware that they would show up wearing bikinis.

- Microsoft cofounder, Paul Allen is suing Apple, Google and 9 other companies claiming they are violating patents he owns

- Apple has sued Kodak, claiming it violated some of its digital camera patents.

- NER Data Corp, which was a maker of compatible toner cartridges, announced it has sold that business, and now plans on becoming a national provider of managed print services, using genuine HP cartridges.

- Lexmark was ordered by a judge to pay $8.3 million to compensate its California employees for a flawed “use it or lose it” vacation pay policy. Judge Greg Alarcon ruled that 178 employees should be compensated for vacation time they did not use before they were terminated.

- Sharp announced it hired Eric Hafter, to run its new Solar Energy Solutions Group, reporting to CEO, Kozo Takahashi.


- Now that Peerless has sold its print controller business to Kyocera, it only has 4 employees in a 2,000 square foot office, and is part owner of Highbury Financial.


- Sharp announced a new A3 color laser MFP, called the MX-2310F featuring:

o 23ppm top speed

o 4 tandem OPC drum design

o New compact design, smaller than other Sharp A3 color MFPs

o Uses a polymer resin frame, to reduce weight of main unit by one third of other SharA3 color MFPs (is this first copier to have a frame that is not made of metal?)

o Uses 77% less power

o Uses LEDs in scanning section instead of fluorescent lamps

o Faster warm up time

o Standby mode uses only 1 watt of power

o Uses new Sharp Microtoner HG2 toner

o 7” touch screen LCD control panel

o Ship data and pricing not yet announced

- A 44 year old man is being pursued in United Arab Emirates after attempting to cash two fake $1 million dollar bills made on a color copier.

- Bret Rhind and Debra Roberson of Missouri were charged with making fake currency using a color copier after they attempted to spend it at Walmart, Target and Lowes. The phony cash was passed in 19 states, and included fake $50 and $100 bills.

- Pitney Bowes announced that it spent $210,000 in the second quarter of 2010 to lobby the federal government. The company’s FM division, called PMBS, is now run by Vicki O’Meara, who was hired after the division reported a 5% drop in revenue in early 2010

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 8/22/10

Special thanx to Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!Take a moment and join the largest group of copier professionals in the world. Here's the link for the P4P Hotel forums.

- The U.S. Commerce Department stated that businesses have boosted their spending on equipment and software by 21.9% in the second quarter of 2010. Related:
o KPMG stated its survey showed that 35% of manufacturing executives expect to increase spending on equipment/software in 2010
o 27% of service company executives will increase spending

- According to InfoTrends, color printing will gain share of revenue (equipment, supplies and service) from 65% to 77% in 2014.

- Muratec launches the MFX-2590 featuring:
o A4 b/w laser desktop MFP
o Actually made by Muratec
o 8.5” color LCD control panel
o Base MSRP of $3995
o 25ppm top speed
o 600x600dpi
o Copy/scan/print/fax standard

- Oce’, a division of Canon, announced it would relabel a Brother A4 b/w laser MFP, and call it the Oce’ VarioLink 3200x with top speed of 32ppm.

- Oce’ announced that it won a facilities management contract from Rolls-Royce Aerospace. Oce’ claims it is saving the firm up to 735,000 euros, and reduced the fleet by 100 machines.

- Office Products Analyst announced the results of its annual Color MFP End User survey. Details:
o based on respondents from survey sent to businesses across the U.S.
o users were ask to rate the performance and effectiveness of their color laser MFP in the following categories:
 total cost of operation
 operability/functionality
 image quality
 workstation/network compatibility
o The manufacturer that received the greatest number of first place ratings was
= Konica Minolta
o The manufacturer that received the highest overall average rating was
= Konica Minolta

-Ricoh apparently will be relabeling a Brother made desktop unit, and call it the FAX1190L for $595 MSRP. (manufacturer’s suggested retail price)

-A scientist from Argonne National Laboratory, named Mr. Vilas G. Pol, claims that he has invented a way to make toner from discarded plastic grocery bags.

- Hewlett Packard announced it sold two Indigo 5500 digital color systems to L&L Printers of San Diego, CA. It also sold an Indigo 7500 system to ORWO Net of Germany.

- The Japanese government fined Hewlett Packard $270 million for underreporting its taxable income.

- A group of investors is suing former HP CEO, Mark Hurd, claiming his disclosures surrounding his resignation led to a drop in share value.

- Microsoft announced it will release a record number of patches for its operating systems next week. All told, Microsoft will release 14 security update bulletins, fixing 34 vulnerabilities.

- Offset press maker, Heidelberg of Germany, reported a net loss of 52 million euros and announced that it will lay off an additional 278 workers.

- Better Buys For Business magazine gave out its annual “Editor’s Choice” awards for high speed b/w systems to:
o Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 950
o Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1051
o Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1200
o Kodak DigiMaster EX series
o Canon imageRUNNER 7095
o Canon imagePRESS 1100 series
o Ricoh PRO 907/1101/1357
o Oce’ VarioPrint 4110/4120
o Xerox 4127
o Xerox Nuvera series

- ABBYY of Moscow, Russia, maker of OCR (optical character recognition) software, celebrated its 21st anniversary. It also celebrated its 10th anniversary of marketing its products in the U.S. (currently in court battle with Nuance and Iris of Belgium over validity of OCR patents)

- Kofax, maker of middleware software to connect MFPs and scanners to document management applications, announced it won a $2.3 contract from the U.S. military, for use in HR department. (Kofax competes with Nuance eCopy and NSi AutoStore)

- Sharp launched the “Portal Connector” for its OSA (open source architecture) equipped MFPs. Details:
o enables network scanning directly from MFP to key corporate applications
o scan to Microsoft SharePoint
o available to Sharp dealers who belong to the Sharp AIP (authorized integrator program)
o free for M283N, M363N, M453N, M503N, M623N and M753N models
o $349 for other models

- Sharp makes an executive change. John Herrington, formerly of LG Electronics, was named President of the consumer electronics division of Sharp USA, reporting to Toshihiko Tanimoto.

- Anvik, a Hawthorne, N.Y.-based maker of lithography systems, won a patent case against Sharp Corp., which could cost Sharp billions in damages.
o Originally filed in 2007, the suit said Sharp had infringed on Anvik's patents by importing liquid crystal display televisions that were manufactured using a method Anvik had invented.
o Sharp tried to get the case dismissed in 2009, saying that Anvik's patents did not apply because they were methods of use rather than manufacture. But Judge Stephen C. Robinson of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York disagreed.

- Samsung of Korea launched the world’s lowest priced A4 desktop b/w laser MFP, called the SCX-4623W, which will offer 23ppm for $249. Toner cartridge has yield of 1,500 pages (based on 5% per page coverage) and sell for $62.99. Dell announced it will relabel it and call it the Dell 1135N.

- Samsung announced a new option for its laser MFPs, called the SCM SCR3310, which provides a Common Access Card reader for $299.99.

- The State of Washington announced that an audit found that Office Depot overcharged taxpayers $306,017 over three months for office supplies.

- Nuance, owner of eCopy, announced its last quarter’s financials:
o net loss of $1.5 million
o net income grew to $91.3 million from $73.3 million
o operating margin rose to 32.9% from 32.6%
o revenue up 13.4% to $273.2 million
o revenue from healthcare and dictation solutions rose 16.5%
o eCopy division revenue up 102% to $35.8 million

- IBM announced it acquired Datacap Inc., maker of document capture software, and headquartered in Tarrytown, NY.
- More details on the PREO Printelligence software being offered as an option by both Xerox and Toshiba:
o used in conjunction with a managed print services program
o made in Calgary, Canada
o software claims it can predict toner usage/coverage per page for each color before end user actually prints the page
 it can only predict, as it does not actually measure the amount of toner applied, instead counts pixels
o software delivers balloon messages to end users’ PC to drive behavior, so end user is not guaranteed that the toner coverage stated is accurate
o collects data on printing behavior

- Adobe Corp. announced it has promoted David Wahhwani to Senior VP and GM of Creative & Interactive Solutions, reporting directly to COR, Shantanu Narayen. Senior CP John Loiacono has been appointed to lead the new Digital Media Solutions division, also reporting to Narayen.

- Long Island University announced it is giving all incoming freshman free Apple iPad computers. The same offer was also made by the School of Medicine at the University of California – Irvine.

-=Good Selling=-

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.