The Transition of the Copier Industry "Part 2"

Part #2

When digital copiers first arrived on the scene, we were all happy that copiers were now capable of network printing, network scanning and faxing. In the early days the biggest benefit to the end users was that if the copier jammed (and they all did), during a copy or print job, you would be able to clear the jam, then reset the system and the copier remembered what page was not copied or printed and you would be able to continue with the job.  When this happened with analog systems you pretty much had to trash the entire copy job and start all over, what a drag that was especially if it happened with a demonstration.

For those of us that were in the industry with the emergence of digital copiers we saw the benefit of having one system that would replace three systems, the existing analog copier, the printer and the fax machine.  The cost per page of fax machines and stand alone printers always and still have a higher cost per page.  I can remember in the late nineties compiling my own cost per analysis for each device and it wasn't easy.  You had to access specs from brochures, get cartridge prices and yields from industry published copier, printer and fax spec check books.  It was an easy sale when you could present an immediate ROI for most customers to replace three systems with one. Traditionally analog copiers and digital copiers always had a lower cost per page than laser printers and fax machines. I'm thinking copier dealers started the managed print/copy trend by offering an all inclusive cost per page contracts with the digital systems and we didn't even know it.

We did have our issues!  We were copier service and sales companies now trying to offer support and solutions for print/fax and scan environments.  Many of the early network copies never printed as fast as they were advertised, print drivers were awkward and it seemed we always had some type of issues with installing print drivers, and addressing print issues. But, we moved forward as an industry with improved technology from the manufacturers and other third party suppliers.  I believe the service model for copiers and the planned obsolescence of supplies and parts always kept us in tune and in front of the customer.

At sometime in the late nineties and early 2,000's we started to see third party hardware and software solutions from companies like eCopy, and Equitrac. I'm sure there were more however I can't remember any of the other players.  Companies like Ecopy and Equitrac allowed copier dealers to move into selling software, supporting software and also presented opportunities for professional services. Within a few years there were many other companies that emerged with additional solutions.  All of these third party providers added value to the digital copier.  Thus salespeople had more opportunities to sell solutions in many different vertical markets and larger companies as well.  The once ridiculed copier that took the butt of all the office jokes emerged as the central hub in the office for processing information on paper.

The digital copier industry of today is changing again and companies like Xerox, Ricoh, KonicaMinolta and Canon are making the transition to service led companies. These companies will be the sole provider for documents whether they are created electronically or printed, they want to help customers with print stream management, forms, email, archiving of documents (electronic and paper), they also want to provide consulting to help businesses increase efficiencies, provide easier work flows and reduce your costs.

more to come with Part 3

-=Good Selling=-

Daily Managed Print Service Industry Notes from Around the World!

Like other printing companies, Lexmark has placed a heavier focus on providing so-called managed print services to help offset headwinds in traditional hardware and supplies businesses. Under such services, printing companies are typically contracted ...read more here

One might not think much when clicking on the print button and taking a printout about how much energy was consumed in the process. This leads us to question how aware Indian enterprises are when it comes to the concept of Green Printing? Is it just a buzzword or is it morphing into reality, albeit slowly. ...read more here

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Feb. 1, 2012 -- Building on its reputation as a leading managed print services (MPS) provider, Mosaic Business Solutions was named as one of 'The Best Places to Work' in South Florida by the South Florida Business Journal. The organization, along with the other honorees, will be recognized at a special event on February 23rd...read more here

Nuance is a company with a plethora of products covering voice recognition, document capture and print management. As Nuance has largely grown through acquisition (about 50 in the past 10 years) it is probably better known by its product names, which include established brands such as PaperPort (desktop productivity), OmniPage (OCR), Dragon Dictate (voice recognition), eCopy (document capture and workflow) and Equitrac (print management) – its most recent buy....read more here
In its latest report on the print market, analyst firm IDC says that, after a flat trend in 2010, it now expects home and office print volumes in Western Europe to slow down even further, declining at a CAGR of 0.6 percent from 2011 through to 2015. IDC says the increasing popularity of IEMDs will contribute to this slow decline.

"New Internet-enabled mobile devices change the nature of users' relationship with documents," said Arnaud Gagneux, director, Imaging Hardcopy and Document Solutions, Western Europe for IDC. "This affects both consumers and businesses, and offers hardcopy vendors opportunities for growth in security, document solutions, and managed print services, to name a few."...read more here

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Industry Notes for 3/25/2011

Special thanx to all of our P4P Hotel Forum Members & Moles for posting this information on the Print4Pay Hotel forums.

- Sharp announced it has acquired a large independent Ricoh copier dealer in England, named IOT Holdings. Details:

o IOT was originally founded in 1964

o Was not a Sharp dealer, so MIF will be converted

o Offices covered entire country

o Specialized in managed print services

o For CEO, Martin McCarney, will remain on board reporting to Paul Molyneux, Managing Director of Sharp UK

o Purchase price not announced

- Sharp just held its annual dealer meeting in Las Vegas, and main attraction to its dealers was the new 10.1” color touchscreen LCD on new MFPs that works similar to an Apple iPhone with its multi-touch functions. The theme for meeting was the new “UI” which stands for User Interface.

- The G-7 group of countries decided to take action to weaken the value of the Japanese yen. The recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant problems caused the yen to rise, impacting the profits when Japanese goods are sold overseas. In addition:

o The Bank of Japan pumped an additional 3 trillion yen into money markets Friday to keep financial markets stable, the fifth straight day of action.

- Xerox announced it sold an iGen4 110 production color system to the University of South Africa printshop.

- Xerox announced it won a managed print services contract from the City of Rochester, New York:

o Claims it will save city more than $2 million

o 5 year contract

o Reduced total number of devices from 459 to 168

o Contract included 24 of the ColorQube color wax copiers

- RISO announced that its high-speed ComColor color inkjet printers (which are actually made by Olympus), are now compatible with transpromo and forms solutions from Solimar. It also announced availability of MICR (magnetic image character recognition) ink for check printing applications.

- InfoTrends estimates that over 10,000 lawsuits have been filed against desktop printer manufacturers in regards to alleged premature replacement of supplies. Customers are claiming that the printer forces them to change out the cartridge, even though the cartridge is not completely empty. Companies named in the lawsuits are Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Lexmark and Samsung.

- The supply of ink and toner cartridges for devices made by Canon (which HP relabels), Epson and Kyocera may be impacted by the temporary closure of plants in Japan.

- Canon announced the following plants in Japan are temporarily closed:

o Utsunomiya = optics

o Oita = compact printers

o Toride

o Ami in Inashiki-gun

o Hirosaki

o Yuki

o Tsukuba – chemicals

o Fukushima

o Kasama – plastic molding

o According to the BBC (British Broadcasting Company), three of the above plants suffered serious damage

- Former IKON executive, Steven Yeffa, was hired as a CFO for Solar Universe, of Livermore, California.

- MGI announced it sold a MGI Meteor DP60 Pro production color system (based on engine from Konica Minolta) to Alphagraphics printshop of Macon, Georgia.

- Equitrac announced that it won contract from its 25,000th customer, with the inking of a deal with John Moores University of Liverpool, England:

o reduced printing by more than 4 million pages per year

o supposedly will save $250,000 per year

o cutting paper usage by 23 tons

- Gartner released its finding of U.S. MFP sales during last quarter of 2010:

o claims that Canon had most marketshare with 18.6% of sales (even though Canon does not certify its numbers)

o totals include low end products sold through websites and office supply/computer superstores

- Hewlett Packard’s Ann Livermore, Executive VP of Technology Solutions Group, stated “HP is particularly interested in acquiring intellectual property to support vertical markets…”, thus implying that HP is going to buying up software companies

- A Delaware judge late Thursday ordered that the letter that led to former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd's August resignation be unsealed.

o A lawyer for Mr. Hurd, Amy Wintersheimer, said in a statement that she planned to appeal the decision, meaning that the letter won't be made public anytime soon.

o The letter detailed his alleged improper relationship with a female employee

- Balboa Capital of Irvine, California, announced it is expanding its copier lease division, by hiring former employees of Great America Leasing.

-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Copiers "Industry Updates"

Special thanx to Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places for posting these great threads!


Take a moment and join the largest group of copier professionals in the world. Here's the link for the P4P Hotel


- Lexmark launched a new A3 color MFP, the X925de featuring:

o Actually made by Fuji of China (which makes most products sold by Xerox)

o Base MSRP of $5849 (print only version has base MSRP of $2399)

o Uses LED, not laser technology

o 600x600dpi actual (advertised as offering 1200dpi with interpolation)

 Does not offer true 8 bits per pixel

o 30ppm top speed b/w or color

o 4 tandem OPC drum design

o Polymerized toner

o Hole-in-the-middle design

o 10.2” touch screen color LCD control panel (one of the industry’s largest)

 LCD can by customized via MyMFP feature

 Help function provides voice and animation to guide end user

o Auto duplex standard

o 100 sheet document feeder standard (does NOT scan both sides of original at same time)

 Top scan speed of 32opm

o Comes standard with 50 sheet stack bypass, 150 sheet paper drawer and 250 sheet paper drawer

 Can add up to three more 550 sheet paper drawers to make unit floor standing (or put on stand)

 Banner printing mode, up to 48” long

 Bypass can hold up to 10 envelopes

o Optional fax board

o Optional card shot feature

o 11 second first color page out time

o Max duty cycle of 200K/month

o Pantone certified (but done not offer optional color calibration device and color management software)

o Built-in print controller standard

 Actual maker unknown

 512MB RAM (can upgrade to 1.5GB)

 1GHz processor

 Hard drive

 USB port on front of device for print from and scan to thumb drive

 10/100/1000BaseT and USB ports in rear

 PCL, PostScript and XPS print drivers

 Optional embedded applications integrated with control panel (LESF or Lexmark Embedded Solutions Framework)

 Scan to email/FTP/network

 Supports PDF 1.6 (but not 1.7)

 IPv6

o Thumbnail preview on color LCD

o Optional proximity card reader

o Hard drive security standard

o No finishing options


- Lexmark launched a new A4 color MFP, the X792 series featuring:

o Made by Fuji of China

o Base MSRP of $4499 (fully loaded $6349)

o Letter/legal size paper handling only

o 50ppm top speed b/w or color

o Uses LED, not laser technology

o 600x600dpi actual (advertised as offering 1200dpi with interpolation)

 Does not offer true 8 bits per pixel

o 4 tandem OPC drum design

o Polymerized toner

o Hole-in-the-middle design

o 8.5 second first color page out time

o Pantone certified (but done not offer optional color calibration device and color management software)

o 10.2” touch screen color LCD control panel (one of the industry’s largest)

 LCD can by customized via MyMFP feature

 Help function provides voice and animation to guide end user

o Comes standard with 100 sheet bypass and 550 sheet paper drawer

 Can add two more 550 sheet drawers to make floor standing

o Banner printing up to 48” long, but only 8.5” wide sheet

o Auto duplex standard

o Document feeder holds up to 75 originals (Scans both sides of original at same time)

o Optional hanging finisher offers stapling and 2/3 hole punch

o Optional fax board

o Optional card shot feature

o Built-in print controller

 Actual maker unknown

 Hard drive

 1GB RAM standard (can upgrade to 2GB)

 USB port in front for scan to and print from thumb drive

 PCL, PostScript and XPS print drivers

 Optional embedded applications integrated with control panel (LESF or Lexmark Embedded Solutions Framework)

 Scan to email/FTP/network

 Supports PDF 1.6 (but not 1.7)

 IPv6

- Print only version, called C792, has base MSRP of $1349 (fully loaded $2999)
- Lexmark launched a new desktop color inkjet printer with an innovative feature. The $399 Genesis features a 10 megapixel imaging sensor (normally found in a digital camera), instead of a flatbed scanning CIS, so that it can capture a color photo in seconds.
- Print for pay industry data for second quarter of 2010 from PIA:

o Total print shipments up 5.1% over 2009

o Toner based print shipments up 11.5%

o Average selling price decline of 2.9%

o Shop owners project increase in sales of 8.2% over next 12 months

o Project growth of 10.5% in toner based printing
- Okidata announced it is adding a hologram to its toner cartridges to prevent counterfeiters from making compatible toner products.
- Equitrac announced it will be a Silver Sponsor of the upcoming Solutions Summit, held in November in Chicago, and organized by InfoTrends.

- Kyocera (aka Kyoto Ceramic Company) announced it will now offer an optional proximity card reader for some of its MFPs. The card reader is made by RD Ideas.
- Kyocera announced it has entered into agreement with Pantone LLC so that its 552ci color laser MFP can carry the Pantone Certification.

- Xerox an acquisition target? This is opinion published by Alexander Roepers, head of Atlantic Investment Management. (Xerox’s current market value is $15.4 billion)
- Xerox announced it sold a 1000 Digital Color Press (made by Fuji) to SPM Print of Rotherhithe, England to replace a DocuColor 8000.
- Xerox announced it sold a 700 Digital Color Press to Arnold & Wessels, a printshop in Klerksdorp, South Africa.
- Xerox announced it purchased TMS Health of Boca Raton, FL. TMS has 600 employees that call physicians and pharmacists to tell them about new pharmaceutical products, fields call-in lines for drug companies and helps find patients for clinical trials. It will become part of the ACS division.
- Toshiba announced that it is the fourth largest maker of notebook computers according to IDC.
- Toshiba announced that it won a bid to build a solar power plant for Chugoku Electric Power Company of Hiroshima, Japan. When it is completed, it will generate enough power for 900 households.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 4/26/10

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

- More proof of economic recovery for copiers. The Copier Network of San Leandro, CA has noticed an increasing trend for copier repossessions and other general office equipment in the United States due to the tough economic times. As a nationally established asset recovery company The Copier Network has the privilege of foresight to predict the economy’s coming up’s and down’s. However, recently, Copier Network has noticed a slight decrease in the number of repossession assignments, which may suggest the economy is recovering. (Preliminary forecast for Repo assignments in 2010 is to be about 15% less than 2009.)

- Fujitsu battle with its former president, Kuniaki Nozoe, continues. The latest allegation is that Fujitsu’s board allegedly offered the president “hush money” of $2.9 million, if he would resign quietly.

- Fujitsu launched a computer keyboard that is made with biodegradable plastics, called the KBPC PX ECO keyboard.

- Fujitsu announced it will spend $537.3 million to upgrade its data centers to offer cloud computing (possible price of 30 cents per hour)

- Fujitsu hired John Hanley as Application Division Managing Director, who will be tasked with 3 year plan to double revenue from custom customer applications.

- Pitney Bowes announced it will expand its relationship with Riso to sell the Riso ComColor color inkjet systems. These Olympus made models will be marketed through Pitney Bowes offices nationwide (which may be why Riso is apparently closing its own branches in the U.S.)
- Some customers still prefer the TIFF format for scanning instead of PDF:
o TIFF stands for “Tagged Image File Format”
o works well with CAD programs, and geographic info systems
o file structure is simpler
o originally developed by Aldus Corp, in 1986 (which sold out to Adobe)
o bitmap format
o files are very difficult to alter
o suitable for storing many pages of a single fax in a single file
o better compression algorithms to make files smaller

- Clearwell Systems announced it sold an eDiscovery software package to Wyatt Tarrant & Combs, a 200 attorney law firm with 7 offices in South Central U.S. and Colorado.

- Kodak’s CEO, Antonio Perez, stated that he plans on Kodak generating $250 million to $350 million per year in patent licensing revenue. Details:
o Program actually started during tenure of former Kodak CEO, Dan Carp.
o Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975
o Kodak has reported only one full year of profit since 2004 (in 2007)
o Kodak filed lawsuits against Apple Computer and Research in Motion Ltd. (makers of Blackberry) for patent infringement.
o Apple countersued claiming that Kodak is using its digital processing technologies
o Received $550 million from Samsung to settle lawsuit
o Received $400 million from LG Electronics to settle lawsuit
o Has 30 licensing agreements now in place, including Nokia, Sony, Motorola, etc.

- In the court case “Ghods versus Citicorp”, the judge ruled that just because a copier experienced service problem, the customer (Ghods) is still responsible for making lease payments.

- Nuance announced new features for eCopy ShareScan:
o Document Conversion Extender which enables customers to turn paper documents into fully-formatted Microsoft Word, Excel and RTF (rich text format) files
o The OCR (optical character recognition) engine has been improved to offer 50% more accuracy
o The OCR engine is now 30% more accurate than other middleware solutions
o Forms Processing Extender enables customer to route and process paper forms, including ability to extract data and perform automated database look-ups ($995 per MFP)
o Available OCR SDK (software developer kit) & API (application program interface) making it easier for other software vendors to connect to eCopy
o Support for 3D capture for book scanning
o Export to over 100 formats, including eBook and audio book
o Scan-to-redaction allows keywords or phrases to automatically remove sensitive information with results printed to redacted copy or sent to user as redacted PDF file
o Scan-to-highlight results in a paper-search feature that finds and highlights info hidden within stacks of paper, with highlighted document either printed or sent as PDF

- Zoran Corp. of Sunnyvale, CA, which makes print controllers for many MFP manufacturers, announced a new controller called the “Inferno” offering:
o Uses Linux with Quatro RISC processor
o 10/100/1000BaseT ports
o Zoran also makes controllers for DVD players, digital cameras, cell phones and cable TV boxes.
- Toshiba announced it is launching a new series of hands-on workshops to teach its dealers how to sell Managed Print Services and Professional Services. Details:
o Classes held in Washington DC, Dallas, Irvine & Chicago
o Speakers include employees of Toshiba, HP, Lexmark and Strategy Development
o Launched by Toshiba’s VP of Marketing, Bill Melo
o There is no charge to attend

- Toshiba announced that it won four awards in the 2010 BERTL Readers’ Choice Awards:
o Total Solution Provider in the Overall Manufacturer Award Division
o Environment Sustainability
o Workflow Integration
o Output Quality for the Toshiba e-STUDIO5520c/6520c/6530c series.

- Toshiba expects to report a big loss in the financial year just ended:
o expects a net loss of ¥20 billion (US$215 million) for the fiscal year that ended in March
o Sales are expected to come in at ¥6.38 trillion, which is a slight drop from the ¥6.4 trillion that was predicted in January

- Microsoft released results of a survey that showed:
o Most small and midsize businesses (SMB) will be spending more on IT in 2010
o 64% stated that they will spend more, compared with 23% in 2009
o Overall spending expected to increase 16% over 2009 levels
o 19% expect to use cloud based services
o 74% will use more remote workers
o 52% admitted to storing a document on a company server and never finding it again
o 39% state that their company does not have any guidelines for storing documents

- Copier data security in the news. CBS network TV affiliates across the U.S. are airing investigative reports reporting to the general public that many copiers with hard drives that companies have traded in, still have confidential information stored on the hard drive, that may wind up in the wrong hands when the copiers are remarketed to new customers. Sample of customers that inadvertently exposed data when they traded in their copiers:
o Buffalo, NY Police Department (Toshiba copiers)
o Tommy Bahama stores
o Affinity Health Plan of New York
o The copiers involved were all made prior to 2008, which means they were made before most vendors introduced hard drive encryption or disk overwrite features

- Rochester Software Associates (RSA) won “Best of Show” awards during the current OnDemand trade show in Philadelphia:
o RSA WebCRD Web-to-Print software
o RSA KDKPrint SMARTBOARD conversion software (converts Kodak proprietary format to PS or PDF)
o RSA SurePreview previewsa job onscreen as a finishied product using WebCRD

- Cason Research predicts that digital color page volume in North America will grow from 10% of all digital pages in 2008 to almost 50%, more than 325 billion pages, by 2017.

- According to BuyerZone, here is average street pricing of document management software systems:
o $3,000 for entry level system with less than 10 users
o $6000 for small system with 10+ users
o $25,000 to $80,000 for mid-sized system with up to 100 users
o $500,000 for enterprise level (hundreds of users)

- United Stationers Supply Co., a large nationwide office supply distributor headquartered in Illinois, announced it has made a minority investment in NER Data Corp., which refills toner cartridges, offers generic printer parts, and provides a Managed Print Services program.

- Apple Computer has filed a patent application for a color computer monitor that will use special filters to display CMYK, instead of traditional RGB. Unknown when and if product will actually be launched.

- Rosetta Technologies announced it will sell MICR (magnetic image character recognition) toner that supposedly will work in 90, 110 & 135ppm Ricoh production print b/w copiers.

- Ricoh announced that in Australia, it will resell EFI PrintSmith MIS software, which is used by printshops to manage their business. EFI normally sells this product directly to printshop owners, so Ricoh is testing this in one country, and may offer it in the future in the U.S.

- Ricoh gave out some details about its last fiscal year end performance:
o operating profit is 44% larger than originally forecast due to cost cutting measures (massive layoffs)
o operating profit of $697 million

- Equitrac announced it has hired Eric Rodriquez as its VP of Direct Professional Sales, focusing on selling to the legal vertical market. Details:
o Eric started his career at IKON in Chicago
o Then worked as sales manager for C2 Legal
o Founded and become CEO of Ribstone Systems (since he now left Ribstone, some are reporting that Ribstone is going out of business, which would be bad news for all the law firms in the U.S. that bought Canon imageRUNNERs with Ribstone/MEAP embedded)

- Carlson Marketing reported results of a survey regarding building relationships with customers:
o Average company loses 10-30% of its customers every year
o Average company loses 50% of its customers every 5 years
o 50% of buyers claim they’d never do business with a company again if it took more than one day to resolve one of their customer service issues (i.e. billing, etc.)
o Proactively soliciting feedback from customers provides 15-20% more cross-selling and upselling opportunities
o More than 66% of companies that communicate with their buyers via weekly or monthly newsletters increase loyalty
o Buyers who receive regular contact are 4 times more likely to recommend a business to a friend or collegue

- Samsung puts convict back in his job. Even though he was convicted of criminal tax evasion charges in connection with massive slush fund and bribery network scandal, South Korean President lee Myung-bak pardoned Lee Kun-hee, former Samsung chairman. Samsung announced that he was rehired and given his title back.

- Kyocera has hired Peter Cybuck, formerly of Ricoh and Sharp, to lead new data security initiative for future MFPs.

- Kyocera’s president and CEO, Mike Pietrunti, announced that the company is looking to add dealers in Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix and Houston. (it lost dealers it had in last couple of years due to acquisitions)

- More data security issues. A vendor survey of more than 200 hospital executives finds instances of health information data breaches and medical identity theft continue to increase despite new federal regulations like the breach notification rule and the Red Flag rules

o Identity Force, a Framingham, Mass.-based vendor of identity theft prevention services, conducted the survey between March 30 and April 13 among members of the American Hospital Association. The company received e-mail outreach assistance from the AHA, which previously endorsed its services. Survey findings include:
 Some 41.5 percent of responding hospitals have 10 or more data breaches annually, up 121 percent from a similar survey done in 2009. Twenty percent of respondents have at least 20 breaches annually.
 Fifty-six percent of respondents believe the health reform law either will not change or will increase instances of medical identity theft. Yet, 71 percent of the hospitals, on average, investigate fewer than 50 possible cases of misuse of identity each year and 34 percent don't keep good patient ID records.
 Only 15.7 percent of respondents believe they are in good compliance with security provisions of the HITECH Act; 48 percent don't know if their vendors and business associates are in compliance.

-=Good Selling=-

Weekend MFP Industry Notes 2/26/10

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

Hewlett Packard announced its last quarter’s financials:

- Worldwide revenue up 8% to $31.2 billion
- Americas revenue up 9% to $13.6 billion
- GAAP operating profit up 20% to $3 billion
- Enterprise storage and server revenue up 11% to $4.4 billion
- Imaging and Printing Group (printers and MFPs) revenue up 4% to $6.2 billion
- Printer/MFP supplies revenue up 1%
- Total printer units up 16%
- Commercial printer units up 11%
- Laser MFP units down 44% (HP has yet to launch the full line of Canon MFPs)
- Services revenue down 1% to $8.7 billion
- Notebook computer revenue up 25%
- Desktop computer revenue down 16%

- Hewlett Packard announced it is working with Royal Dutch Shell to create seismic sensors to find oil and gas deposits underground.

- At the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show, Hewlett Packard launched the Photosmart ML1000D minilab. This product (which uses Edgeline color inkjet technology) will be marketed to photolabs (like those in local Walgreens, etc.). HP announced that it already won a large order for this product from Rossman, a chain store in Germany.

- Hewlett Packard announced ban on exports of non-working electronics to developing countries. (dead HP printers and MFPs can no longer be dumped in third world countries)

- Canon is preparing to launch 5 new b/w A3 MFPs, the imageRUNNER 2500 series. Details:
- will range from 20 to 45ppm
- will not utilize the new ADVANCE print controller technology
- will based on current imageRUNNER IR-3220 platform

- Canon filed a lawsuit that may hurt IKON. Details:
- Filed in Virginia Eastern District Court
- Patent infringement claim against Densigraphix of Montreal, Canada (office in New York)
- Densigraphix makes toner cartridges for Canon-made laser printers and MFPs
- IKON, a division of Ricoh, apparently recently became Densigraphix’s largest customer when IKON was cut off from buying toner from Canon when it sold out to Ricoh
- The patent in question, #7647012, describes design of a toner cartridge for a copier
- Densigraphix toners sell for 30% less than those made by Canon
- If Canon wins the lawsuit, IKON could be forced to buy supplies from Canon, most likely at list price

- Lockheed Martin won a $500 million contract from the U.S. Census bureau to scan in approximately 160 million paper census forms. Lockheed will use 45 each of the IBML ImageTrac IV high speed scanners. The scanners will be installed in Baltimore, Phoenix and Jeffersonville, IN.

- Kodak announced that it signed a new loan agreement with Citicorp and Banc of America giving it access to $200 million. With the new funds, it paid down $125 million in debt to other lenders.
- Kodak announced that it signed a multi-year contract with Ricoh.

Details:
- Ricoh & IKON branches will now be authorized to sell both Kodak Digimaster production b/w systems and NexPress production color systems
- Contract also includes Kodak Document Imaging Solutions and Unified Workflow Solutions
- Includes CREO print servers and PRINERGY production print workflow solutions
- IKON and Ricoh will offer service contracts for Digimaster products, but only Kodak can service the NexPress product
- Kodak claims to have 3,000 service technicians total in 120 countries
- Unknown how many RBS or IKON locations will have these products on display
- IKON, a division of Ricoh, at its recent open house at its San Antonio branch, had a guest speaker, David Cameron of Photizo Group, give a lecture on advantages of managed print services contracts. Also on hand was VP of Marketing for the San Antonio Spurs basketball team. Host was Craig Ruhland, VP of Sales for IKON.


- Ricoh now shipping the Aficio MP 4001 and 5001 digital b/w laser MFPs offering:
go here for Ricoh Aficio 4001 and 5001 'Spec Review"

- Ricoh announced pricing for the PRO C720, which is 72ppm version of the C900 production color system. More on this here P4P Suites

- Ricoh is preparing to replace the current Aficio MP C6000 and C7500 color MFPs with the new C6001 and C7501 featuring:

- C6001 has top speed of 60ppm for color or b/w
- C7501 offers 70ppm color and 75ppm b/w speeds
- 1200x1200dpi
- Optional EFI Fiery
- Scan speeds up to 82ppm
- pricing and ship date not announced


- Konica Minolta Europe announced it is offering an option for its MFPs to allow for wireless remote care:
- Partnered with KPM and Jasper Wireless
- MFP can be equipped with a KPN Global SIM with transmits data from MFP to Konica Minolta service center
- Can transmit supply order, service call and meter read
- Countries included in wireless service option from KPN are Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Spain & France
- Pricing not announced
- Konica Minolta UK (England) announced it will resell fax server software from Avanquest Solutions.

- DocuLex of Florida, maker of document management software, announced it won “Best Value for Price” recognition from BERTL.

- Qoppa Software of Atlanta, GA announced that it is offering PDF Studio 6.2 for Google Docs, allowing end users to create and edit PDF from Google Docs documents. MSRP of $95.00

- Equitrac announced that the new version 5 of Equitrac Professional cost recovery software will provide a “Scan to DMS” feature, allowing scanning directly into a document management system.

- Nuance Communications announced it has acquired MacSpeech, a maker of voice recognition software for Mac computers

- Solution software maker, Open Text Corp., (headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada), announced it plans on making multiple acquisitions in 2010. (Open Text in past bought Captaris RightFax)

- Nuance launched a free, downloadable PDF reader software, called “Nuance PDF Reader”. Nuance’s software is only 18MB, as compared to Adobe Acrobat Reader which is 45MB. It also is temporarily allowing end users free access to its cloud computing offering “Nuance PDF Document Conversion Service”, which takes MS Word and Excel files and converts them to PDFs.

- In a survey of businesses in Europe by BERTL, end users rated their favorite suppliers of managed print services. In order, here are top choices:

- Hewlett Packard
- Canon
- Xerox
- Ricoh

- Roger Mozda, of Taunton, MA, was arrested for attempting to use a fake $10 bill that he made on a color copier. Mr. Mozda has already served jail time in the past for the same crime.

- Kyocera announced it won “Excellent Value” recognition from Office Products Analyst for its FS-C5100, C5200 & C5300 desktop color printers.

- Kyocera (fka Kyoto Ceramic Company) announced it has designed a thermal printhead, the KLE series, for printing on rigid ID cards or credit cards in full color at 300dpi, at 50mm per second, faster than any other competitor.

- Toshiba announced it has completed its acquisition of Fujitsu’s hard drive business. As a result of the acquisition, Toshiba launched a 2.5” drive that can hold up to 600GB.

- Toshiba announced it will resell Digital Rights Management software from Fasoo, which will provide end users ability to encrypt and password protect documents. Pricing unannounced.

- Toshiba announced it now has supplied 35 hydro power generators to the country of Columbia, and will deliver 3 more by end of 2013.

- Staples, the office supply superstore chain, announced it will now start selling IT services (to compete with Best Buy’s Geek Squad and others). The company’s VP of Finance, Joe Kalinoski, stated that the new Staples Technology Solutions division has:

- 400 employees
- access to certified specialists for Cisco Systems, Citrix, Linux, etc.
- onsite and remote support
- desktop support for PC, Macs and Linux devices
- managed print services
- data center assessments
- target market is SMB (companies with 1 to 250 employees)
- Candy Murphy is now CP of Staples Contract Technology Solutions
- result of Staples’ acquisition of Thrive Networks of Boston, MA (which has 90 employees in MA)

(Thrive Networks was started in basement by three people in 2003)

- More troubles for Canon’s attempt to buy Oce’. Sparinvest, a Danish investor group which holds Oce’ stock, announced it will join with Hermes and Orbis (two other investor groups) in opposing the bid, in an attempt to force Canon to increase its acquisition offer. Together, the three groups hold 18.5% of Oce’s stock. So far, Canon has purchased 28% of the shares.

- KnowledgeLake Inc., which develops products for Microsoft SharePoint users, announced it is partnering with ReadSoft of New Orleans, to deliver automated invoice processing and document classification to SharePoint ECM (electronic content management) market.

- Fujitsu announced an option for its SnapScan desktop scanners, that allow users to scan directly into EverNote. Details on EverNote:

- data storage using could computing
- basic service is free, but end user must view advertisements when they store or retrieve files from their personal repository accessed via the Web
- For $45 per year, there are no ads, and can store up to 500 megabytes

- Fujitsu and Canon announced that they will partner in Japan to offer cloud computing-based managed services for printing and IT equipment. The joint program will bundle Canon’s Managed Document Services (managed print services) and Fujitsu’s Workplace LCM (managed IT services) to businesses in Japan. If successful, the company may launch in other parts of the world. Pricing unannounced.

- Fujitsu announced that its scanners can now connect to fScanX software from Elevated Software Development. The software supports speeds up to 90ipm, and offers ability to automatically run common tasks without writing code.

- According to research firm, NelsonHall, the document management services market (which includes managed print services) will grow to more than $45 billion worldwide by 2013.

- Sharp announced that it may close its LCD plant in Barcelona area of Spain due to high labor costs. This will impact 430 union employees, as production would shift to factories in China.

- ExactCODE of Berlin, Germany announced production scanning software for the Apple Macintosh computers. The new ExactScan 2 software can process up to 120 images per minute with color correction, OCR, auto crop, deskew and compression, and supports up to 200 different document scanners.

- Astro-Med Inc. announced it won a $1.4 million contract from Boeing to make thermal printers that will mount in airplane cockpits.

- Pitney Bowes announced that its Government Solutions division won a facilities management contract from the Department of Justice. The length of the contract, its value, and amount of MFPs included were not announced.

- Global Industry Analysts Inc. predicts that the US photocopier maker will reach 1.5 million units by 2015. This includes all segments.

- Giant offset press makers, Heidelberg & Komori, announced that they will NOT have booths at the upcoming Graph Expo show in Chicago, due to declining sales. Show is held 10/3-6/2010.

- In an article in FORTUNE magazine, titled “Paper Chase”, prints produced on A3 b/w copiers are expected to drop 50% by the year 2013.

- IBM announced it has acquired Intelliden of Menlo Park CA, which makes network management software. IBM claims that 60% of all network outages are caused by manual configuration errors. IBM has made more than 50 acquisitions since 2003.

- Fujitsu changed its mind and apparently will now have a booth showing off its scanners

- Kodak also changed its mind and will have a scanner display

- Canon, IBML, BancTec, OPEX & Plustek will also be showing their newest scanners

- AnyDoc Software, Kofax & ReadSoft have pulled out of event

- Recent survey of businesses conducted by AIIM revealed:
- 62% of important paper documents are still archived as paper
- 25% are photocopied beforehand “just in case”
- Less than 33% of paper originals are destroyed after scanning
- 70% feel that paper records are needed for legal reasons (which has not been the case for 20 years)

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes

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

- Gartner, based on survey, states that by the year 2012, 20% of businesses won’t own any of their own IT assets. This includes servers, PCs and software. Businesses will turn to leasing, employee ownership and cloud computing. The reason is that companies are moving to use operational budgets instead of capital budgets to upgrade their IT infrastructure.

- DocuWare of Germany, maker of popular document management, announced it will spend $1.45 million to develop web-based solutions.

- Ricoh launched a new production color system, called the PRO C720 system offering:
- Slowed down, cheaper version of the slow selling C900
- Offers a top speed of 72ppm versus 90ppm of the C900
- Maximum duty cycle of only 320K/month
- Runs at same speed, regardless of paper weight, like the C900, up to 110lb. cover
- Uses same EFI Fiery as C900
- finishing options are limited to saddle stitch booklet maker and standard finisher

- Ricoh apparently will be reselling large format color inkjet printers from Epson.

- Large medical firm sued for violations of health data security law, known as HIPAA act:
- Health Net of Connecticut Inc. was sued by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal
- Sued for violations of HIPAA privacy and security rules
- Large breach of identifiable medical records and Social Security numbers
- It was reported that hard drive disappeared in May, 2009
- The hard drive contained health information on 1.5 million members, including 446,000 in Connecticut
- The data was not encrypted

- On Demand Books, LLC, announced it is now offering a new version of its Espresso Book Machine, which can produce a 300 page paperback book in less than 4 minutes. The new model uses the engine from a Xerox 4112 b/w production system.

- Open Text Corp., maker of document management/search/retrieval software, announced that it is boosting its - business process automation by adding next-generation document recognition:
- called Capture Center version 4.0
- formerly known as Captaris DOKuStar
- includes numerous recognition modules
- machine and hand print recognition
- optical character and intelligent character recognition
- magnetic ink recognition

- Toshiba announced a new option for its color MFPs, the eBRIDGE Color Profiler Tool featuring:
- Works with ES1000 spectrophotometer ($1299)
- Software that enables the creation of ICC device output profiles
- Target Reader creates characterization data files used to build custom color profiles
- Data Viewer allows end user to view character data in several ways
- Profile Builder initiates construction of the ICC profile
- Profile Viewer assists in verifying the integrity of the ICC profile
- ICC stands for International Color Consortium, a standard in color management
- Base MSRP of $499 for software
- Provides color management, without owning an EFI Fiery

- In an interview with Hewlett Packard’s Director of Commercial & Enterprise Printing, Mr. Samir Shah, stated:
- “There is a tremendous opportunity for color, especially since the technology is becoming affordable”
- “Our second priority is to take AIO and MFD portfolio to the next level. Going forward, you will witness a lot of innovation and initiatives from HP in this regard. The market for MFDs is just the tip of the iceberg. We want not only to grow marketshare, but also grow the market base.”
- “The third priority is around the toner business and evangelizing the value propositions of original toner. The science behind toner technology is not understood by many. Our intent is to take it closer to the customer.”
- “Fourth is to ensure that our channels are up to date in terms of technology. We also want to arm them will all the possible ammunition to enable them to grow their business”
- “We are working on launching a TCO (total cost of ownership) calculator”

- Hewlett Packard & Microsoft announced a three year, $250 million partnership. Details:
- Cuts across sales, engineering and marketing
- Bundled products aimed at small business
- Will be delivering a next-generation data warehouse, which bundles tens of servers and can hold hundreds of terabytes of data

- According to Von Hansen, a VP with Hewlett Packard, the company will be reselling a total of 34 different Canon copiers in the year 2010.

- HP’s CEO, Mark Hurd, received a total of $24.2 million in pay during 2009.

- Xeikon, a division of Punch of Belgium, announced it has appointed John Blumsack, as Vice President of Sales, to increase its sales of production color systems.

- A former copier dealer pleaded guilty to using bogus copier leases to scam area businesses and nonprofits. Scott Arthur Waddell of Raleigh, NC, pleaded guilty in federal court to fraud. He will be sentenced later and faces up to 20 years in prison. Waddell ran two companies, Modern Office Solutions and PST Consultants. Investigators said he created a web of forged documents, including copier leases and credit applications, to scan area businesses and nonprofits.

- Google threatened to shut down its China operations after a cyberattack on its infrastructure. According to Google:
- the attack was coordinated and focused on 20 large companies
- aim of attack was to et the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists
- attack also focused on U.S., China and Europe based Gmail accounts that supported human rights in China

- OfficeMax announced it will offer in-house paper shredding:
- $0.59 per pound for first 5lbs.
- $0.49 per pound for next 5lbs.
- $0.39 per pound for 11 pounds or more

- Equitrac announced it will receive an investment of $16 million from Brookside Mezzanine Partners.

- Law firms are concerned about the cost to store and retrieve case data.
- Collecting the data, processing, and staging it for review, and then reviewing it for privilege
can be costly.
- One large data producer calculated that these steps can cost between $5000 and $7000
per gigabyte of data.
- A typical midsize case could comprise 500 gigabytes of data
- 26% of law firms state that preproduction privilege review consumed between 20% and 50% of their litigation budgets annually.

- Fujitsu of Japan announced that it is entering negotiations with Sagem of France in regards to 3G mobile telecommunication services.

- Ashley Hawkins of Benwood, West Virginia, was arrested by police after she attempted to make a purchase at a local gas station using a fake $20 bill she made using a color copier.

- Samsung of Korea has decided to settle out of court with Kodak, which had sued the company regarding Kodak’s digital camera patents.

- Canon announced that in the year 2010, it will celebrate 20 years of recycling toner cartridges, in Japan, China, France and Virginia.

- Canon announced the following appointments:
- Kunihiko Tedo is now Senior CP and GM of Finance & Accounting
- Yuichi Ishizuka is now Executive VP of Consumer Imaging Group
- Eliott Peck is now Senior VP of Consumer Imaging Group
- Junichi Yo****ake is now Senior VP of Imaging Systems Group

- Office Depot announced results of a survey:
- 30% report having lost an important document due to a messy desk
- The most likely items to cause workspace clutter were:
- 32% = food
- 31% = coffee cups
- 12% = spare shoes
- Most common problems caused by disorganization were:
- 47% = lost time
- 16% = meeting tardiness
- 14% = missed deadlines

- According to IDC, business analytics software-as-a-service (SaaS) market will grow more than three times as fast as the total business analytics software market with a compound annual growth rate of 22.4% through 2013.

- Panasonic announced it is aiming for a total of $100 billion in sales per year by March of 2013. The company plans to announce detailed business plans for the next three years in May, after reviewing business overlaps and potential synergies between it and Sanyo, which it just acquired. (unknown if it will discuss its plans for its digital copier division)

- The National Conference on Weights and Measures plans to take up the issue of inkjet cartridge labeling at its meeting in January in Nashville, TN. Printer makers are expected to fight potential plans to force them to put labels on the boxes stating how much actual ink is contained in the cartridge.

- Toshiba announced it will now offer its dealers refurbished Hewlett Packard and Lexmark printer parts, to lower their costs to support managed print services programs. The parts are supplied by Depot America.


- The Managed Print Services Association gave out its MPS Leadership Award Winners for 2009:
- Nationwide Insurance for “Corporate MPS Implementation”
- LaserNetworks won for “MPS Vendor of the Year” (owner is Chris Sloate)
- PrintFleet won for “Infrastructure Component Provider”
- Supplies Network won for “MPS Infrastructure Logistical Provider”

- Law Technology magazine gave out 6 awards to Autonomy Corp. for its document management software for law firms.

- According to some industry analysts, Samsung and Sony are going to invest $3 billion to start a joint venture.

- Okidata announced it will relabel the Konica Minolta magicolor 1690MF desktop color laser AIO, and call it the Okidata MC160.

- Agilysys Inc. won a bid to supply document management software to Royal Caribbean International Cruise Lines in Miami, FL.

- According to Forrester Research, tech spending (including MFPs) in the U.S. will grow 6.6% in 2010, after being down 8.2% in 2009. “The technology downturn of 2008 and 2009 is unofficially over” said Andrew Bartels of Forrester.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Indsutry Notes from 10/27/09

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

Xerox now shipping 4 new mid-range color MFPs, the WorkCentre 7425, 7428, 7435 offering:
- replaces the 7325, 7335, 7345 & 7346
- actually made by Fuji of Japan
- 4 tandem OPC drum design
- Polymerized toner, called Xerox Emulsion Aggregate (EA)
- 7425 offers 20ppm color and 25ppm b/w
- 7428 offers 28ppm b/w or color
- 7435 offers 35ppm b/w or color
- optional fax board (only 400dpi)
- first copy out time as fast as 5 seconds for b/w, 6.4 seconds for color
- Duty cycles of 60K/mo, 80K/mo & 105K/mo respectively
- Base MSRPs of $10,499, $11,599 & $13,499 respectively
- Scanning is OPTIONAL and does not come standard with print controller
- 75 sheet document feeder
- Maximum scan speed of 54opm
- 1200x1200dpi (interpolated to 2400dpi)(2/4 selectable bit depth)
- 600x600dpi when copying or scanning
- Built-in print controller offers 667MHz processor
- PCL & PS print drivers come standard
- 1.5GB RAM and only a 40GB hard drive
- Comes standard with bypass and only one paper drawer
- Up to 256gsm paper handling in bypass or drawers
- Up to 12”x18” paper in bypass
- Maximum paper capacity with options of 5,140 sheets
- Can replace drawer 1 with a 60 envelope feeder
- auto duplex standard
- Optional Bates stamping
- 30 second warmup time from sleep mode (longer if turned off)
- gloss mode
- Optional EIP for embedded applications
- Optional SD card reader (print from digital camera memory sticks)
- Optional scan to searchable PDF (OCR board)
- Optional USB port for scan/print from thumb drive
- Optional thumbnail preview for jobs on hard drive
- Optional EFI Fiery print server with 1.86GHz processor and 80GB hard drive
- Optional internal stapling finisher
- Optional external finisher with stapling, hole-punching & booklet making

- Hewlett Packard launched three new laser MFPs available exclusively for its PartnerONE dealers:
- LaserJet M9059 is a 50ppm, b/w A3 unit, based on existing M9050.
- LaserJet M4349x is a 45ppm, b/w A4 unit, based on existing M4345
- Color LaserJet CM6049f is a 40ppm, color A3 unit, based on existing CM6040f
- All are actually made by Canon
- The only difference of the new models, versus the units that they are based on, is that they have toner cartridges that are keyed, so end users have to buy the toners from the HP PartnerONE dealer, and not on-line, or in a superstore

- Hewlett Packard announced that is sold an Indigo 7000 production color system to DS Graphics, a print for pay.

- According to Computer Resellers News magazine, Hewlett Packard took the #1 spot from Xerox in desktop color laser printer sales in the U.S. Details:
- HP was in sixth place last year
- Xerox was number 2, and Lexmark was number 3

- Hewlett Packard launched BookPred, a service that will allow users to purchase printed copies of scanned pages of a book. It also launched MagClould, allowing anyone to publish their own magazine, and printing it at a print-for-pay location near to where the reader ordered the issue. All work will be sent to printshops that own HP Indigo systems.

- More details on the new alliance between Canon and Hewlett Packard:
- HP will begin advertising Canon copiers on its website on 11/1/09
- HP will resell imageRUNNER, imageRUNNER ADVANCE, and imageRUNNER ADVANCE PRO series
- Speed range from 23ppm to 105ppm devices
- According to Larry Trevarthen, HP’s Worldwide Director of Market Development,
HP also has access to the imagePRESS production print products
- All the devices will initially carry the Canon name
- The products will be identical to what Canon dealers sell, including supplies
- Service will be provided by a Canon factory direct branch primarily. Only if there is no Canon branch in the area, will the service contract be offered to a Canon dealer.
- Canon currently has 60 factory branch locations, but will expand to 90 locations within 2 years
- HP will support Canon copiers with its Web JetAdmin utility
- HP will also modify its Universal Print Driver to support Canon copiers
- Starting in early 2010, HP will begin to develop its own print controllers for the Canon copiers

- Lexmark announced a new program for copier dealers:
- Has created a line of 15 models that will not be sold on-line or through retailers
- These “XS” models will only be available through copier dealers
- 5 are A4 b/w MFPs, 3 are A3 b/w MFPs, 2 are A4 color MFPs, 2 are A3 color MFPs, 2 are A4 b/w printer, and 1 is A4 color printer.
- Speeds range from 35 to 55ppm
- All have a published MSRP, but not a published street price
- All have large touch screen LCD display
- Offer eTask software for embedded application ability
- Have high yield cartridges so they are ideal for managed print services contracts
- Lexmark claims it has signed up 150 dealers in the U.S. so far, and hopes to have
300 total in next few years
- Typical opening order is $12K to $30K to become authorized
- Product is actually ordered from Tech Data or Synnex, instead of directly from Lexmark
- Will have it first dealer meeting in Kentucky

- Lexmark announced results of its last quarter’s financials:
- Will let go of 825 employees to cut costs
- Still employs 3000 in its Lexington, Kentucky facility
- Total revenue fell 15% to $958 million
- Laser unit shipments declined 22%
- Total hardware revenue down 24%
- Supplies revenue down 12%
- Net income down 73%
- cash on hand of $900 million
- Service revenue (including MPS) down 14% to $654 million
- gross profit margin up to 32.7%
- total long term debt of $648.7 million
- total liabilities of $2.45 billion

- According to Lexmark:
- 44% of their revenue is from inkjet, and 56% from laser
- Average employee generates 10,000 pages per year
- Each filed or stored document is printed 19 times
- 20% of print pages are lost
- In 2000, there were 60 trillion pages printed
- In 2012, there will only be 55 trillion pages printed
- 98% of page printed come from an A4 device
- 80% of all print jobs are 3 pages or less

- Lexmark still fighting a company that makes generic cartridges for Lexmark printers. Static Control Components Inc. is appealing a ruling in the Sixth Circuit U.S. District Court, which allowed Lexmark to shut down Static Control.

- Lasercare, a dealer in Los Angeles, CA that services HP, Xerox, Lexmark and other brands, claims it has fixed its 100,000th printer, since it was founded 22 years ago.

- Toshiba announced it will borrow $90 million from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) to complete the new nuclear engine plant in Chennai.

- Toshiba gave out its “Top Achievement” awards to the following dealers for outstanding service:
- Atlantic Tomorrow’s Office
- Copy Products Inc.
- Stargel Office Solutions

- A company is suing leading research firm, Gartner, over the accuracy of its Magic Quadrant reports. ZL Technologies, maker of email search/archive software, is claiming that it was unfairly ranked low in comparison to its competitor, Symantec. The case will be heard in the 9th US District Court in San Jose, CA.

- Gartner announced that it forecasts an increase in tech spending globally by 3.3% to $3.3 trillion in 2010. However, it claims that tech spending will not return to pre 2008 levels until 2012. This year experienced a 16.5% drop it IT hardware spending according to the research firm.

- Photizo Group, which offered consulting and training to dealers for managed print services programs, announced it has opened up its fifth office, this time in London, England. It also has offices in Boston, New York, Austin and Kentucky.

- Equitrac announced it is shipping version 4.0 of Equitrac Office, featuring:
- print management system for corporate enterprises
- improves security of confidential documents
- network based authorization, authentication and accounting
- enhanced reporting of media usage
- end user popup notifications including hyperlinks
- web-based Release Station allowing print jobs to be released using web browser
- Follow-You Printing now allows Xerox and Sharp copiers to have embedded application to over-ride printing rules and print color instead of b/w
- Supports Apple Remote Desktop

- Ricoh’s complaint seeking to bar Okidata from selling any more printers and MFPs in the U.S. won review by U.S. trade officials. The U.S. International Trade Commission said it would investigate the charge that Okidata is violating Ricoh patents.

- Sharp gave out more details on its recent dealer meeting in Washington DC:
- Total US revenue was down 3%
- Has self-financed leases on a few major account deals, but has no plans to open up
its own leasing company
- Has a total of 440 dealers in the U.S.
- Is adding 20-40 new dealers per year, but also losing about half that many per year
- Has 10 factory direct branch operations from 13 acquisitions
- Has temporarily halted acquisitions, until economy improves, but still hopes to have 25 locations total in next few years
- Goal is for branches to account for 45% of sales in U.S.
- 4 of its 10 largest dealers are Global dealers (owned by Xerox)
- While it launched the Frontier series of A4 MFPs last year, it only has sold a total of 7000 units
- Healthcare vertical market is where most A4s are sold, accounting for 14% of units sold
- Only 310 of its 440 dealers are selling the Frontier A4 models
- In 2005, the total number of 31ppm+ A3 units was 479,431, and in 2008 was 563,309
- In 2005, the total number of 31ppm+ A4 units was 21,779, and in 2008 was 116,536
- Now has 135 technology partners for its OSA embedded solutions offering
- Now offering Front Panel, or ability for end user to customize the copier LCD display
- My Sharp Digital Signage, allows end users to run an announcement on the LCD display
- Future models will come standard with OSA, rather than current option for $349
- Will replace the existing AR-M207 20ppm b/w copier with the MX-200D, also 20ppm
- Will replace the AR-M257 and AR-M317 models in 2010 with ones with new design to match rest of product line
- Will replace the MX-M620 and MX-M700 models with models that also incorporate new look, and will also have pull out keyboards, and 150 sheet document feeder that scans both sides of
original at same time

- Konica Minolta announced it has opened up a new factory direct branch in Sydney, Australia. Details:
- located in Macquarie Park
- tall, multi-story glass building
- includes offices, showroom and warehouse in one facility
- surrounded by 200 native trees
- on first floor in front of building is large showroom, which has carpeting with a CMYK pattern stitched in to accent the new mid-range color and production color systems
- building also includes training facilities for technicians and end users
- an on-site café is also inside for use by guests and employees
- person in charge of facility is David Cooke, Executive General Manager of the branch

- Kyocera announced a new embedded solution for its HYPAS equipped MFPs. The new Capture2go allows end users who have an Apple iPhone to scan to the phone, or print from the phone to Kyocera MFPs.

- PrintAudit, of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, announced that its managed print services software is now compatible with Macintosh computers.

- IBM executive charged with insider trading. Robert Moffat, a 31 year IBM veteran and confidant to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, allegedly conspired to commit securities fraud. He was arrested by the FBI, which believes he netted $20 million in illegal profits.

- Samung of Korea announced it will spend $2.3 billion to build a color LCD manufacturing plant in China, set to open in 2011.

- Current and former Kodak employees have asked a federal judge for final approval of a $4 million settlement that would resolve a long running class action lawsuit accusing Kodak of failing to properly compensate its employees.

- Oce’ announced it will resell eCopy solutions to go with its relabeled Toshiba and Konica Minolta MFP offerings.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 6/28/09

Special thanx to the P4P Hotel members for this!

Canon’s executive vice president of research & development, Toshiaki Ikoma, was interviewed recently and made following comments:

- Will gradually shift from make-everything-in-house approach to open style I which Canon purchases and licenses technologies from other firms
- “I will primarily focus on deepening and broadening the company’s technology base. Specifically, precision, optic, large-scale integrations, designing, imaging, and materials technologies, among some other, compose Canon’s technology base.”
- I look to increase the depth and breadth of these base technologies. By making the most of this technological foundation, the company will create cutting-edge camera, ink jet and other technologies.”
- “To this end, the company has setup up the base-technology development department to ensure the new technologies will spring up”.
- “Today, however, companies advocating open innovation – assembling products by using the cheapest but excellent technologies developed by other firms around the world – are proving winners, as has been the case for Apple Corp., with the iPod and for Nintendo Co. with the Wii video console.”
- “Apple has brought out new products on after another through the open approach. Still, it remains well ahead of competitors because it outstrips rivals in its ability to come up with new product concepts.”
- “What makes the difference is not elemental technologies but conceptual power and marketing skill. Marketing knowledge is gaining importance in R&D as well.”

Fuji of Japan announced that it now has moved 80% of all manufacturing for copier/printers to China to reduce costs:
- Mie Prefecture of China make functional components such as printheads and circuit boards
- Niigata of China make printers and supplies

Xerox’s VP of North American Resellers, stated that its printer/MFP sales through computer dealers are down 19%.

Fuji of Japan announced it started its own channel on YouTube to advertise its copiers and MFPs.

In South Africa, Konica Minolta launched a managed print services program, and named it “bizhub quantum”.

Oce’ detailed its new cost cutting plans:
- will fire 800 employees to save $91 million in costs through 2010
- during last fiscal year, the company cut 1,250 employees
- by end of 2010, will have cut a total of 8% of its workforce
- agreed to an amendment in its loan covenants, which provide increased flexibility for the
necessary restructuring costs
- under previous loan covenants, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was not adjusted for extraordinary items
- under new covenants, EBITDA is adjusted for restructuring charges, exceeding a threshold of $3.6 million per quarter, for book profits for the sale of real estate and/or business, and cumulative
translation adjustments
- the company will use the proceeds of any business or real estate disposal to reduce debt

Muratec now relabels DocuLex document management software, and calls it “ScanTab”

Notable Solutions Inc. is launching a new scan/retrieve solution, called AutoStore Express featuring:
- Plans to offer this as an optional embedded application for a variety of MFP manufacturers
- Users can scan and send to a folder, by browsing for the folder on the network using copier control panel
- Can also search for folder using LDAP
- User can authenticate and document routed to end user PC
- Users can see emailed document sent from the MFP in the Sent folder of Microsoft Outlook
- Can scan to email as a link, so bandwidth is decrease, as the person receiving the email accesses document via the link
- Generates encrypted PDFs
- Barcodes can be used for indexing
- Offers zone OCR, from a defined place on documents
- Automatically removes blank pages from documents
- Cropping feature to remove white space around small original
- hole-punch mark removal
- deskew/despeckle
- Can remove backgrounds and colors
- Pricing and ship date not yet announced

In a survey conducted by the Association of National Advertisers of marketing executives, the following was found:
- 56% will cut back on their media budgets this year
- 50% will cut back on production budgets
- 41% will cut back on sponsorships/event activities
- 41% will increase pricing dealers
- 26% will increase social networking/word-of-mouth activities

Toshiba’s new CRO, Norio Sasaki, was interviewed recently:
- company reported a $3.61 billion loss for last fiscal
- recently raised $5 billion in capital through debt and new stock shares
- plans to boost company’s shareholder-equity ratio to 30% from current 19%
- stated that he would consider having Toshiba exiting unprofitable businesses
- would overhaul its computer chip operations
- expects to lose 50 billion yen this fiscal year
- will cut fixed costs by 330 billion this fiscal
- expects significant growth in the nuclear power plant division
- forecasts building 39 nuclear power plants by end of 2015

Hewlett Packard announced a new product that it claims will revolutionize the printer industry. The new HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web. Details:
- MSRP of $399
- Full color inkjet MFP
- Features direct web access from a color LCD control panel, allowing end users to print right from a website
- Will be able to print coupons from coupons.com, fandango.com, google.com and nickelodeon.com

Kyocera announced it has partnered with IDC to add cpc data on its competitors to the Kyocera TCO Tracker website. The purpose is to show end users the apparent savings when using Kyocera’s amorphous silicon ceramic drum based desktop printers.

Kyocera is being sued by WIAV Networks, of Reston, VA, over alleged patent infringement. The suit was filed in Texas, over wireless router technology.

Equitrac, maker of MFP/printer accounting and cost recovery solutions, announced more executives hired:
- Joe Hartnett was hired as VP of North American Sales, who was formerly Director of Sales for EFI.
- Kimberly Meyers was hired as Senior Director of Marketing, and is formerly from XMPie.

SageWorks listed the 10 most bankruptcy prone companies:
- auto dealers
- motor vehicle dealers
- nursing care facilities
- hotels
- sporting goods and hobby stores
- land development companies
- investigation and security providers
- residential building companies
- motor vehicle parts makers
- print for pay companies
- It also listed the most financially healthy companies:
- IT consulting
- Systems design firms
- Accounting & bookkeeping firms
- Health practitioners (chiropractors, physical therapists, etc.)
- Electricals/electronics wholesalers
- Technical/trade schools

Two people were arrested in Seagoville, Texas for using a color copier to make fake $100 bills. One worked as a cashier at the local Walmart, and her partner came in to the store to buy gift certificates from her with the fake cash.

Gerald Lynn McIntire, 41, of Oklahoma City, OK was ordered to pay $2300 in restitution to businesses and banks in three states after he plead guilty to making fake $100 bills on a color copier.

California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, announced an initiative to replace all paper textbooks in public schools with digital textbooks. No details given on the cost, and what devices will be used to view the books. Local book printers were very concerned with the news.

Oce’ announced that it will relabel the Konica Minolta bizhub 601 and 751, and call them the VarioLink 6022 and 7522.

Some investors and analysts said that the Obama administration’s proposed restructuring of the financial regulatory system would force General Electric to divest itself of its GE Capital Leasing division. GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Inmelt is opposed, saying; “We are certainly opposed to it, since this issue had nothing to do with the financial crisis.” Inmelt is already trying to scale back GE Capital , which accounted for half of the conglomerate’s profit in 2007. The goal is that the company would only rely on it for just 30% of earnings.

eCopy won an award from BERTL as the “Best Enterprise Document Imaging”.

Key Leasing has announced they are exiting the copier leasing business.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 3-29-09

The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from various trade publications.

- ImageSource magazine announced its Perfect Image Awards, which are given to successful independent dealers:
- Dealer of the Year = Modern Office Methods, a Lanier dealer with multiple locations in Ohio.
- Outstanding Service Program = Modern Office Methods
- Outstanding Sales Program = Thermocopy of Tennessee
- Outstanding Marketing Program = Impact Networking of Illinois/Wisconsin
- Most Innovative Customer Retention Program = Mr. Copy of California
- Best Implementation of Technology Strategies = Fisher’s Document Systems of Idaho
- Best Use of Company Website = Cell Business Equipment of California
- Outstanding Community Involvement = E.O. Johnson of Wisconsin

- Variable data software maker, XMPie, announced a new option, called “Personaleffect E-Media”, which generates personal URLs. When a direct mail piece is generated, the prospects name is created into a website, that the end user can enter to respond to the offer.

- Former Xerox workers have reached a preliminary settlement against their former employer over benefits they claim they should have received. The U.S. District Court approved a $51 million settlement.

- Xerox sales agent, Mr. Copy, won a bid to provide DocuShare document management software to OwnerGUARD Inc., an insurance claims processor in San Diego, CA. The solution was named DocuShare Insurance Claims Workflow.

- Hewlett Packard won a managed print services contract from GES of Las Vegas:
- Originally had 754 copiers, printers and fax machines
- Has 1500 employees in 3 offices
- Was spending more than $1 million per year to own and operate devices
- New contract will reduce costs by 28%
- Now has just 268 HP MFPs

- Hewlett Packard announced it resolved its patent infringement case against Ninestar Image Co. Ltd. of China, which was making compatible cartridges for HP devices.

- Kyocera announced that it will be the official sponsor of the 2009 World Figure Skating Championship in Los Angeles from 3/23-3/29.

- Pitney Bowes announced that its mailing systems division will resell the Riso HC5500 high speed color inkjet printing system to customers looking to create full color variable data mailers. Pitney will compete against Riso branches and Riso dealers with the HC5500, which is jointly made by Riso and Olympus.

- Samsung announced it will offer a Managed Print Services Program thru its printer/MFP dealers featuring:
- Assessment Consulting Tool (ACT) which features a USB device to scan network for printers and MFPs
- Cost Simulation Tool (CST) is a tool to create a cost savings proposal
- SyncThru Admin 5 is a device management dashboard
- CounThru 2 Pro provides remote device management

- A recent study showed that approximately 75% of invoices generated by companies in the U.S. are paper based, thus proving the adoption of electronic invoicing is very slow.

- After starting a managed print services study in 2003, Boeing Corp. announced it finally chose a vendor to award a bid. Details:
- Originally had over 32,000 imaging devices
- Covers 195 offices in the U.S. and 168 locations in other countries
- Printers & MFPs provided by Lexmark
- Management of program provided by Dell Computer (which purchased hardware from Lexmark)
- Roll out will completed by 2011
- Plan is to reduce total imaging spend from $150 million to $110 million per year

- Charles Barbour of Boston was arrested after getting caught making fake $100 bills using a color copier. He allegedly sold fake $100 bills for $10 apiece.

- Staples is running a promo where it will give customer up to a $50 discount towards a new printer if customer brings in an old trade-in printer.

- Lexmark announced a new A4 b/w MFP, the X466DTE, offering:
- MSRP of $1679.00
- 40ppm top speed
- Letter/legal only
- 50 sheet document feeder
- Touch screen full color LCD control panel
- Auto duplex
- First page out time of 6.5 seconds
- Print/copy/fax/scan features
- Two 550 sheet paper drawers

- Toshiba announced a reorganization in its dealer division (called Toshiba EID):
- Steve Rhorer, formerly VP and GM of EID has left, and his position will not be backfilled
- Instead, top dealer division executives will report directly to Mark Mathews, current President & COO
- Larry White, VP of Sales
- Bill Melo, VP of Marketing
- George Colborn is VP of Service
- Sue Wilson head of Supply Chain Management, reporting to Steve Tungate

- Toshiba announced it will sell land it owns for 22 billion yen ($225 million) in an effort to raise cash.

- Equitrac announced it has named Jim Kano as Senior VP of Worldwide Sales & Marketing. He most recently served as VP of Worldwide OEM Sales for EFI, maker of Fiery controllers.

- Panasonic released a new A4 color laser MFP, the DP-MC210 offering:
- 4 tandem OPC drum design
- 21ppm top speed b/w or color
- 3.6” color LCD control panel
- Auto duplex
- 50 sheet document feeder
- 770 sheet paper drawers
- PCL print driver only
- 1200x1200dpi (does not offer 8 bits per pixel)
- Can scan up to 9600dpi in color or b/w
- Comes standard with READiris 7.0 OCR software
- Copy/scan/print/fax
- Base MSRP of $1995.00

- Samsung now shipping a new A4 b/w laser MFP, the SCX-5935FN featuring:
- 35ppm top speed
- Scan/fax/print/copy
- 7” color LCD control panel
- 80GB hard drive
- 80K/month duty cycle
- Auto duplex
- 1050 sheet paper capacity
- 1200x1200dpi
- 70 sheet document feeder
- Base MSRP of $1689.99

- MWAi, maker of remote device management systems, announced it is acquiring Print Control Software/ROI Print Manager. The company will develop end user management software applications. Also announced:
- Shane Hannan was appointed Senior VP of Sales & Marketing
- John Brostrom, who formerly ran ECi La Crosse (and founded the original LaCrosse Software) is now Senior VP of Operations

- Sharp announced it signed a multi-year agreement to be a sponsor of the New York Mets baseball team.

- Sharp lost a patent infringement brought against it by Samsung, over use of the Korean company’s LCD technologies.

- Sharp announced it is recalling 2,000 of its TVs, due to an overheating problem.

- Kodak announced plans to close two different manufacturing operations, and lay off 300 employees.

- The Wilkes County Georgia Board of Education awarded a copier bid to Milner Document Products, a Lanier dealer, which has offices in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina. Details:
- 17 units
- $2126.47 per month lease payment
- $0.009 for b/w clicks
- $0.08 for color clicks
- 36 month lease

- Apparently a lawsuit against Best Buy was granted class action status, over allegations that Best Buy sales reps were paid bonuses to deny honoring the company’s price match policy.

- Kyocera announced it has entered into an agreement with Pantone to get its new color laser MFPs, called TASKalfa, certified by Pantone.