Daily Copier & MFP Industry Notes from around the World

Valhalla, NY, September 7, 2011 – FUJIFILM North America Corporation, Graphic Systems Division will present an outstanding array of innovative solutions at GRAPH EXPO 2011, September 11 – 14, 2011, at McCormick Place South in Chicago, Illinois at booth # 627. Exhibiting under the banner “expect INNOVATION™” Fujifilm will demonstrate the products and technology that printers are looking for to strengthen their businesses and expand their operating capabilities...read more

TOKYO, Sep 07, 2011 - Delivering his keynote speech at the India-Japan Global Partnership Summit 2011 which was held from September 5-7 in Tokyo, Kazuo Inamori, founder and chairman emeritus of Kyocera Corporation, emphasized the importance of adopting an altruistic approach so that the two nations can develop a true partnership based on mutually beneficial relations...read more

HARWOOD HEIGHTS, Ill., Sept. 7, 2011 -- FCL Graphics Incorporated, a leading North American printer of marketing and direct mail materials, today announced major investments to enhance and expand services to marketers and producers of communication materials...read more

ROCKVILLE, MD, Sep 07, 2011  -- Notable Solutions, Inc. (NSi), a leading developer of distributed content capture and workflow solutions, today announced that it has achieved record revenue for its fiscal year ending June 30, 2011, reporting year over year growth of 35 percent. The company's...read more

Costa Mesa, CA – September 7, 2011 – Paradigm Imaging Group, a leading distributor of large-format scanning and printing solutions, tradeshow displays and graphics, releases the Graphtec CSX530-09 Large Format Scanner.
The CSX530-09 features Graphtec's new Luxios™ scanning...read more

Kodak has introduced a new range of all-in-one printers which are Google Cloud PrintReady, allowing users to print documents and photos from anywhere in the world using any internet connected device. Users can also use Kodak Email PrintReady to send printing jobs, which the ...read more

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes from 1/04/2010

- Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, announced he is renewing his effort to sue Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, AOL and other companies for patent infringement. The patents at issue are owned by Interval Research, which was founded by Allen and Xerox’s David Liddle in 1992.


- Pitney Bowes announced that Patrick Keddy, Executive VP and President, will retire at end of year.

- Hewlett Packard announced it sold an Indigo W7200 production color system to Schmidt Printing of Byron, Minnesota.

- Adobe Corp. reported it first billion dollar quarter. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010, Adobe achieved record revenue of $1.008 billion.

- Brother announced a new promotion where customers who buy replacement ink cartridges get a free music download from EMI.

- Fuji, maker of most Xerox copiers, announced that future models will have “Smart Power Saving Technology”, where power will provided on an as needed basis. For example, if end user is scanning, then power is not supplied to print engine to save electricity.

- Impact of proposed new leasing rules studied. PricewaterhouseCoopers stated that it conducted a survey of the impact of proposed new rules that would do away with off-balance-sheet accounting for equipment leases. The study revealed that 24% of companies surveyed would experience an increase in debt of over 25%.

- Kyocera (aka Kyoto Ceramic Company) announced the following awards won:

o BLI stated that test of FS-1320D and FS-1370DN b/w laser printers delivered “flawless” reliability

o Industry Analysts Inc. gave “most reliable” rating to TASKalfa 250ci and TASKalfa 300ci color laser MFPs

o BERTL gave “Outstanding” ratings to FS-C2125MFP and FS-3140MFP

- Kyocera announced it now offers an embedded/panel integration HyPAS connector for docSTAR Eclipse document management system.

- Office Products Analyst Inc. stated that in a recent survey of 232 printshop owners:

o Kodak NexPress production color systems were rated the most reliable

o Sharp b/w MFPs (not production units) were rated most reliable

o Canon products were least reliable.

- Canon apparently is planning on selling a LCD manufacturing division to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. of Taiwan (aka Foxconn) for $1.2 billion.

- Canon announced it plans on buying controlling interest in Altair Nanotechnologies Inc. of Reno, NV, which makes lithium ion electrical energy storage systems.

- A new survey conducted by Lexmark finds that 7 out of 10 offices workers that have access to wireless connection to their printers do not use it, due to connectivity and security issues.
- According to Contextworld, the best selling desktop color laser printer in the world is the Samsung CLP-315, beating out the HP Color LaserJet CP2025n by twice as many sales.

-=Good Selling=-

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

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 forums!

-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 Xerox "TWIX Notes"

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

- Fuji announced it sold a Color 1000 Press (made by Fuji but also sold by Xerox in U.S.) to Dashing Print of Sydney, Australia. It also sold a Color 1000 Press to Western Mailing of New Zealand.

- Xerox announced following production print system sales:
o Xerox Color 1000 Press and two Nuvera 144 b/w systems to Conlin’s Digital Print & Copy Center in Pennsylvania
o Xerox Color 800 Press to Alphagraphics of Cherry Creek, Denver, Colorado.
o Xerox Nuvera 288 to CMP of Dorsett, England
o All made by Fuji

- Xerox announced it will relabel a Samsung-made b/w laser A4 MFP and call it the WorkCentre 3550 featuring:
o 35ppm top speed
o Base MSRP of $1099
o Toner yield of 5,000 pages based on 5% coverage for $129.99 each
o 75K/month maximum duty cycle
o Comes standard with analog fax board
o 4 line b/w LCD display (not a touch screen)
o 50 sheet bypass and 500 sheet drawer
 Second 500 sheet drawer for $249
o Auto duplex
o 50 sheet recirculating document feeder
 35opm b/w and 24opm color scan speeds
o Built-in print controller
 Actual maker unknown (most likely Marvell)
 360MHz processor
 256MB RAM (can upgrade to 512MB for $499) but no hard drive
 10/100BaseT & USB port
 Includes single license of Scan to PC/OCR from Nuance
 Scan to FTP/SMB/network/email/LDAP
 PCL and PostScript print drivers standard
• No XPS print driver available
 No accounting features
- Panasonic announced that its desktop scanners can now scan directly into DocuLex document management software (DMS).

-=Good Selling=-

Copier Dealers Move Over Manufacturers Sets Sights on MPS Providers

MPS Wars Salvo Shots Fired!

Copier Dealers get outta the way! Manufacturers are now setting their sites on Managed Print Service Providers!

In a recent blog MFP Wars "Copier/MFP Manufacturers to Buy Printer Manufacturers", I suggested that the time may be right for copier manufacturers to start acquisitions of the largest Managed Print Service Providers.

A few days ago Fuji Xerox announced that they had purchased Upstream Print Solutions based in Burwood, Victory in Australia. Upstream Print Solutions operates three offices out of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Born in 1995, and then a merger in 2007, "Upstream Technology and Print Solutions Australia merged to create “Australia’s largest independent print company”.

Upstream's claim to fame is that they bucked the trend and focused on Total Cost of Operation early on, while doing that they also made claim that the differentiator "remains our experience, size and vendor neutrality". I'm gonna go out on a limb here but I think that's gonna change very soon.

Who's next the next manufacturer to strike gold and who will be the next candidate for purchase? All good questions and ones I don't have the answer to. But, we all know it's the next wave of aquisitions by the giants of the industry. It's unlikely that Ricoh, KonicaMinolta, Canon will sit tight for very long.

Any Comments?

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 8/15/09

Special thanx to Print4Pay Hotel Members for these updates!! BTW, we've added boards for Muratec, Okidata, Toshiba, Panasonic, Hp, Kodak, OCE and Lexmark. Go here (Print4Pay Hotel)an become a member of the largest network of copier professionals in the world!!!

Fuji of Japan announced that it will show a prototype full color inkjet press at the upcoming PRINT 09 show:
- Was originally shown at the DRUPA show in Germany last year
- Is sheetfed design, instead of rollfed
- Largest sheet size of 20.5” x 28.3”
- Will not actually be running in the booth
- Claims that output has look and feel of an offset press
- Top speed of 10,800 letter size sheets per hour (or 180ppm)
- Infrared drying system
- Uses piezo crystal inkjet head technology (called Dimatix Samba)
- 4 bit imaging
- launch date and selling price unknown
- unknown if Xerox will relabel

More financial woes for Oce’. The Dutch Central Bank has approved plan for Oce’s Pension Fund. Details:
- The fund ratio had dropped to 79.4%
- The Dutch Central Bank had requested that Oce’ submit a recovery plan
- Oce’ will now make a further annual contribution to the fund of 7.5 million euros
- Fund ratio now is 83.9% (goal is 100%)

Lexmark marked the 15th anniversary of the launch of its first inkjet printer, the Lexmark ExecJet 4076 IIc:
- Original design made by IBM, which sold off its printer and typewriter division in 1991,
which became Lexmark
- Just under 100 people were involved in the project
- Project was led by Vic Hair, who is not Lexmark’s VP of R&D
- Many thought that inkjet would be a failure and not replace dot matrix printers
- Original prototype design was a failure as the ink spray in the printer caused a rubber belt
inside to disintegrate
- Company is still selling cartridges for the original model

Lexmark now shipping the RFID UHF option for some of its b/w laser printers. This special drawer allows the printer to print on a special paper that has a built-in radio frequency generator. The purpose for this could be:
- Allowing someone to find a lost important document by using a RFID tracking device
- If someone tried to leave the building with a confidential document, it could trigger an alarm

Hewlett Packard announced it has sold one of its Indigo 5500 production color systems to Walsh Color Print, a print show in Ireland.

Two weeks ago, Hewlett Packard, through its Indigo division, offered its employees the option of receiving their pay statements electronically. So far, only 35% have opted not to receive a printed statement. HP had planned on saving the cost of printing 156,000 statements per year.

Hewlett Packard announced it has sold one of its Indigo W7200 production color systems to Mercury Print Productions. What is significant is that the print shop is located in Rochester, NY, which is headquarters for Kodak, and large presence of Xerox.

According to the Photizo Group. Hewlett Packard has overtaken Xerox in the global market for managed print services revenue.

A recent survey conducted by a lead research firm revealed the following about choices companies make when acquiring desktop printers:
- 71.9% of the b/w printers installed are HP
- 55.6% of the color printers installed are HP
- 42.3% of all printers installed are color
- 64.9% of output from a color printer is in color
- 5.7% of all color devices have software installed to restrict color
- 16.7% of color printers sold are purchased from a copier dealer
- 38 months is average age of printer
- 71.2% of printers are connected to the network
- 71.6% prefer to print to their printer instead of a shared MFP
- 38.6% have a printer on their desktop
- 57.5% make additional copies using their personal printer rather than MFP/copier

Sharp announced another copier dealer acquisition. This time the company acquired one of its own dealers, First Choice Business Machines, which has 8 locations in the Seattle, Washington area. All will be run by Dan Taylor. First choice also sold Oce’, Kyocera, and Ricoh made products, and was 30 years old.

Offset press maker, Heidelberg of Germany, announced its last quarter’s financials:
- Unit sales down 52%
- Revenue down 22%
- Reported a loss of 63 million euros
- Will lay off an additional 2,500 employees (on top of 2500 already let go)

InfoTrends released a study on why so few Japanese print shops have invested digital production color systems. Apparently, Japanese printshop owners have not adopted web-to-print software or variable data, as they feel they would rather maintain face to face selling with their customers. In addition, most feel that offset print quality is still superior.

R.R. Donnelly, North America’s largest commercial printer, announced that its profit has dropped 83% due to slow sales.

Kodak launched Prinergy PDF File Editor Software, allowing graphic artists to use power of Adobe Photoshop and/or Adobe Illustrator to modify PDF files to improve their quality for production printing.

A scientist named Jeon Hwn Ju is trying to market a printer concept named “RITI” which uses coffee grounds instead of ink to create a b/w image.

Gary Johnson, president of Toshiba copier dealer, Zoom Imaging Solutions, announced they are moving their headquarters to Roseville, California. The 16,000 square foot building will house 60 employees. The company employs a total of 135 people in 9 different offices.

After losing millions trying to launch its HD-DVD format, Toshiba announced that it will instead adopt its rival’s technology, and begin making Blu-Ray HD players, which was invented by Sony.

Despite the weak economy, variable data software maker, DirectSmile of Berlin, Germany, announced double digit sales growth, as more printshops migrate to digital production print systems. Their new Director of Marketing is Franziska Muller, formerly of Konica Minolta.

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 6/14/09

Special thanx to the P4P member that supplied me with this.

Densigraphix, a Buffalo, NY company that makes generic toner cartridges, announced it has joined the Business Technology Association (BTA), which most copier dealers in the U.S. belong to.

BTA (Business Technology Association) announced the results of a survey of copier dealers in the U.S.:
- Superior Performance as a Primary Product Line Provider = Toshiba
- Corporate Support = Toshiba
- Inventory = Toshiba
- Distribution = Kyocera
- Product Line = Kyocera
- Outstanding Performance As a Secondary Product Line = Muratec
- Availability of Sales Training = Kyocera

BTA is hosting an educational event for copier dealers on September 24th & 25th:
- At the Ritz Carlton Hotel in White Plains, NY
- Presenters are Frank Cannata, John Hey, Kate Kingston, Mitch Morgan, & Mike Woodard.
- Event concludes with attendance at Yankee Stadium with Yankees and Boston Redsox
.
Kyocera announced it has hired Print Management Solutions of Ormond Beach, FL to provide training to its dealers on the Kyocera FASTrack managed print services program.

Kyocera launches a new color laser desktop A4 MFP, the FS-C1020mfp offering:
- 21ppm top speed color or b/w
- 35 sheet document feeder
- 250 sheet paper drawer
- 256MB RAM
- Copy/print/scan/fax
- 400MHz processor
- 600x600dpi
- PCL & PostScript print drivers
- Optional 500 sheet second paper drawer
- Base MSRP of $1220 (Check out the review here)

Buyers Labs Inc.(BLI) gave out a “Outstanding Document Management Solution” award to docSTAR.

BLI gave out its spring 2009, “Pick” awards for MFPs. Winners included:
- Sharp MX-2600N
- Sharp MX-3100N
- Xerox WorkCentre 7425, 7428 & 7435
- Canon imageRUNNER 5050N
- Konica Minolta bizhub 601 & 751
- Sharp MX-4101N & MX-5001N
- Toshiba eSTUDIO 6530CT

Katun of Minneapolis, MN announced it now offers lower cost, generic color toners for the Canon imageRUNNER C3200, C2880 and C3380 color laser MFPs.

Canon announced it would restart the construction of a digital camera factory in Nagasaki, Japan. It will open in 2010 and employ 1,000 workers.

Samsung announced it is offering a zero percent lease promo for its printers and MFPs. Leasing provided by DeLage Landen (DLL).

IDC announced that in the first quarter of 2009, the new Sharp Frontier series of color laser A4 MFPs were the most popular product in the 31ppm to 44ppm category of color MFPs. Unknown if this means more company were downgrading from A3 (ledger size) to A4 (letter/legal size), or if they were replacing desktop color laser printers and bringing more sales into the MFP market.

Sharp announced it was headed for its first ever operating loss and would cut 1,500 jobs to save money.

Ricoh announced a new promo to increase sales of its new Ricoh PRO C900 production color system:
- End user gets 300,000 clicks/pages for free (color or b/w)
- Offers ends 7/31/09
- Customer must sign up for a minimum of a 2 year service/supply contract

Ricoh sent out a press release announced that its IKON San Diego branch sold a PRO C900 production color system to a print shop named; “Print & Letter Company”. (is this device such a poor seller that they have to send out a press release every time they sell one to boost interest?)

Ricoh launched Print Copy Scan (PCS) Director 6, featuring:
- Print management software package
- Includes PCS Assessor, which is a sales tool that allows a full version to run at customer site for 60 days, providing ability to analyze volumes and survey equipment. Rep can use to create MPS proposals.
- Consists of three core modules; Analysis, Rules and Recovery
- makes graphical reports
- users can belong to multiple groups
- can create highly configurable rules to customize how print jobs behave
- can base cost on total pages, color pages and total b/w pages
- restrict MFP access and features per user or groups of user
- tracks all printing including local, networked and direct to IP jobs
- embedded using Ricoh’s Java SDK platform
- PCS Suite pricing details:
- 5 seat pack = $1026
- 10 seat pack = $1944
- 25 seat pack = $4725
- 50 seat pack = $7900
- Up to 20,000 seat pack = $216,000
- PCS Analysis only pricing details:
- 5 seat pack = $257
- 10 seat pack = $486
- 25 seat pack = $1183
- Up to 20,000 seat pack = $54,000
- PCS Director embedded module:
- 1 MFP = $898
- 5 MFPs = $2248
- 25 MFPs = $4948
- Up to 250 MFPs = $21,950
- Professional Services – ½ day = $875
- HID card reader kit = $299
- CASI card reader kit = $299
- NexWatch card reader kit = $299

Dell Computer announced it has so far sold $3 million worth of PCs, printers and accessories using Twitter.

Interesting statistics from Nuance, makers of the popular OmniPage OCR scanning software:
- Average office worker types at 34 words per minute
- Only 58% accurate when typing on computer
- Factoring out the errors, actual average speed is 15 minutes to type one page of text
- OmniPage is up to 99% accurate for OCR

Okidata’s CEO, Stewart Krentzman, was interviewed recently, and made these comments:
- In 2008, business grew by just less than 2%
- Still selling close to 10,000 printers per month
- By 2012, 70% of businesses with 250 employees or more are going to be in a
managed print services environment

Wind River Systems Inc., maker of technology for print controllers and MFPs, announced it has been acquired by Intel for $884 million.

How expensive is ink for a color inkjet printer?
- ink averages $60.88 per ounce
- Chanel #5 perfume is $44.11 per ounce
- Don Perignon Champaign $4.53 per ounce
- Milk is $0.03 per ounce

Hewlett Packard and IDC announced survey of office workers and usage of copy machines:
- Average salary of knowledge workers = $60,000/year or $28.25 per hour
- Average salary of administrative assistants = $36,822 or $16.21 per hour
- Estimated annual labor cost of one 8 minute trip per day to a copy machine = $961.30 per year for knowledge workers, and $540.20 per year for admin worker

Fuji, maker of most Xerox products, had its president, Tadahito, make comments during an interview about is business in Asia, where it markets the products under its own name:
- 22% of its revenue was from facilities management
- Has been making Xerox products for 47 years
- Is in charge of East Asia, Pacific and Australia (Xerox has rest of world)
- Operating profit margin dropped 42.7% over past year
- Will reduce total employees by 7%

Bowe Bell & Howell announced new high speed scanners, the Ngenuity series:
- can scan originals from rice paper to plastic cards to stuffed envelopes
- top speed of 150opm at 200dpi for b/w or color
- uses SharpShooter Trilinear CCD camera
- white LED illumination
- Up to 600dpi at slower speeds
- Steel paper path
- Rubber rollers last up to 600,000 scans
- MSRPs range from $18,000 to $35,000.

-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Xerox "TWIX"

Xerox announced it will implement and support Solimar Solutions. Details:- Solimar Rubika is a modular document workflow solution - Solimar Print Director print job management software- SOLsearcher Enterprise for indexing, storing, searching and retrieving documents.

Xerox launched a trade-in program to boost sales of its desktop printers and MFPs.

Examples:

- Xerox Phaser 6360 = $300 to $600 rebate

- Xerox Phaser 7760 = $800 to $1200 rebate

- Xerox Phaser 8560 = $300 to $600 rebate-

Free shipping and recycling for the trade-in product.

Fuji (maker of most Xerox products) president, Tadahito Yamamoto, gave comments on economy:- “still uncertain”- “I think it will take another two to three years”- Expects sales to fall 7.2% this year- Hopes to double its revenues by 2014

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 6/08/09

Special thanx to the Print4Pay Hotel member that sent this to me!

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

EFI announced it will conduct its next “Connect” educational trade show at the Wynn Las Vegas on 8/2-5/09.

Corporate United, a national group purchasing organization of Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 companies, announced that for the third time, it has awarded Konica Minolta its “Supplier of the Year” award.

New use for copy paper. Nakabayashi Corp. of Tokyo, announced a new floor-standing machine that converts discarded copy paper into toilet paper rolls. It is able to produce two rolls per hour from around 1800 sheets. The machine weighs 600 kilograms, and will sell for $95,000 apiece.

Okidata now shipping two versions of the same new desktop color LED printer, the MC560n and CX2033:
- Both are 20ppm color and 32ppm b/w
- MC560n has MSRP of $999, but uses more expensive supplies
- CX2033 has MSRP of $2500, but uses less expensive cost per page supplies

IDC reports data from printer/MFP shipments worldwide:
- Shipments fell 17.6% in 2008
- 26.4 million units shipped in first quarter of 2009
- MFP shipments fell 10% in 2008
- Color laser MFP shipments rose 6% to 632,000 units in 2008
- Print-only devices dropped 28% in first quarter of 2009 and 21% in first quarter of 2009
- HP had a reduction of 24%, but still has a 41% marketshare

EFI announced it received three “BEST” awards from BERTL:
- EFI Fiery XF won for color management for wide format color inkjet printers
- EFI Fiery Central
- EFI SendMe

Ricoh made a $50 million cash offer to buy Carl Lamm Holding AD, its largest dealer in Sweden with 26 locations. Ricoh also recently required ATA International, it dealer in Poland.

Ricoh has discontinued work on Refined Printing Command Stream (RPCS) technology:
- like Desktop Binder, RPCS was Ricoh’s attempt to create its own product to differentiate its products from the competition, however, it has decided not spend any more research & development funds on either project
- RPCS was advertised a new, innovate print driver, supposedly a better option than PCL or PostScript
- Actually was host-based, meaning that it made the end user’s PC do the job processing, rather than using the print controller in the MFP (like Microsoft Windows Graphic Device Interface or GDI)
- Probably goal for Ricoh with RCPS was to lower cost of manufacturing of its MFPs, as they would not need powerful print controllers, as processing is done on customer’s PC’s instead
- Canon is now only traditional MFP vendor still trying to market a host-based driver,
called Ultra Fast Rendering (UFR)


Ricoh launched the ELP-NX, which is a Card Authentication Package (CAP), allowing access to their MFPs with usage of customer’s current investment in employee Proximity badges:
- CAP offers:
- Is not CAC (CAP is for SMB and enterprise installs, not for government)
- card access for up to 500 users
- authentication for applications needing card access
- sold in 1 to 1000 device packs (MSRP from $240 to $96,000)
- 5 year support agreement included
- requires Ricoh Java VM card
- PC used requires minimum of 1GB RAM
- Ricoh dealers and branches to receive 4 day instructor led training class
- CAP Enterprise Server (CAP-ES) for MSRP of $1440
- Card access management for up to 50,000 users
- Server based application
- Single point of administration (must have CAP for each MFP)
- Must be loaded onto end user’s PC with minimum of:
- 2.4GHz processor
- 1 GB RAM
- MS Windows Server
- Enhanced Lock Print (ELP-EX)
- authenticates to the ELP queue – secures print only
- operates by itself
- supports current and previous Ricoh MFP models
- user chooses which print jobs are locked print
- does not integrate with other applications
- Enhanced Locked Print Next-Gen (ELP-NX)
- Works with CAP
- authenticates to MFP with CAP
- operates with CAP under SDK/J
- supports recent Ricoh MFPs only
- All print jobs held at MFP
- Sold in 1 to 1000 device packages (MSRP from $120 to $48,000)
- Integrates with GlobalScan NX
- Authenticates with CAP
- Password no longer required for CAP
- Auto populate user’s email address or MyDocuments folder
- Ricoh resells three different card readers:
- Each are $299.00
- HID (125KHz)
- CASI-Rusco
- NexWatch
- includes 5 year support
- Current Ricoh models that are supported:
- Ricoh MP4000/5000 aka Lanier LD040/050 aka Savin 9040/9050
- Ricoh MP2550/3350 aka Lanier LD425/433 aka Savin 9025/9033
- Ricoh MPC6000/75000 aka Lanier LD260C/275C aka Savin C6055/C7570
- Ricoh MPC2050/C2550 aka Lanier LD520C/525C aka Savin C9020/C9025
- Ricoh MPC4000/C5000 aka Lanier LD540C/550C aka Savin C4040/C5050
- Ricoh MFC2800/C3300 aka Lanier LD528C/533C aka Savin C2828/C3333

The person in charge of Ricoh in the U.S., Kirk Yoshida, is being recalled to Japan. He will be replaced by Kazuo Togashi, where he recently ran Ricoh Europe.

Ricoh plans on launching in June the new Personal Paperless Document Manager for its MFPs:
- Will replace the Ricoh Desktop Binder simply scan management software
- PPDM is actually created by Nuance Communication (makers of PaperPort, OmniPage, etc.)
- PPDM sells for $299 per seat
- Is same as Xerox’s Scan to PC Desktop Professional which is also made by Nuance,
and charges $1049 for 5 seats
- Is an embedded application, and uses Ricoh’s Embedded Software Architecture (ESA) where
Ricoh first installs Java virtual machine firmware onto MFP
- PPDM applet is inside copier, but following is included to load onto end user PC:
- PaperPort Professional 11 for image management
- OmniPage Professional 16 for OCR (conversion of images to Word, Excel, etc.)
- PDF Converter 5 Professional
- When activated, copier’s LCD screen show three columns, and end user must make a selection from each:
- First column is destination, such as; desktop, desktop folder, etc.
- Second column is workflow, such as; convert to excel, convert to word, PDF, etc.
- Third column is profile, such as; b/w, color, grayscale, etc.

Ricoh now shipping the Pro C550EX and C700EX. These are based existing workgroup color MFP, the C6000, but offer accessories to make these able to be sold into the production print space.
- Base MSRPs of $58,840 & $67,240
- C550EX offers 55ppm full color and 60ppm b/w
- C700EX offers 70ppm full color and 75ppm b/w
- uses polymerized toner (Ricoh PxP)
- uses 4 tandem OPC drum design
- has two 160GB hard drives
- Uses engines from the MP C6000 and C7500 mid-range color MFPs
the Konica Minolta bizhub C552 & C652
- Offers the EFI Fiery E8100 print controller
- Supports up to only 80lb. cover in the paper drawers
- will auto duplex up to 90lb index only
- 110lb. cover stock must be placed in the bypass of the RT4000 large capacity deck for $4780.00
- Standard paper capacity is 5,300 sheets
- Finishing options include stapling, hole-punch, GBC punch, booklet maker and three ring binding
- SR4010 fifty sheet stapling finisher for $3150.00
- SR4020 fifty sheet staple and 20 sheet booklet maker for $5460.00
- SR5000 one hundred sheet stapling finisher for $5830.00
- Tab sheet holder for $47.00
- Hole punch kit for $920.00
- Cover insertion unit for $1160.00
- Z-folding unit for $7350.00
- 100 sheet document feeder comes standard
- Will be marketed with color click pricing as low as $0.0495, single click 11”x17”,
and b/w clicks as low as $0.0132.
- Designed to compete against the Konica Minolta PRO C5501 & C6501 systems
- 600x600dpi, but does not offer true 8 bits per pixel imaging

Nukote, which makes generic toner and ink cartridges, announced it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Steven Bernstein, former operator of Copies Inc., an office equipment vendor in Buffalo, NY, was convicted on embezzlement. Apparently, he illegally used more than $27,000 in his employees 401K money to try to keep his company afloat.


Fuji (maker of most Xerox products) president, Tadahito Yamamoto, gave comments on economy:
- “still uncertain”
- “I think it will take another two to three years”
- Expects sales to fall 7.2% this year
- Hopes to double its revenues by 2014

The new event for managed print services is the Recharger MPS, held on 8/18/09. Details at www.rechargermag.com

-=Good Selling=-

MFP News 2/09/08

- Fuji Film of Japan announced a 10.9% drop in revenue due to reduced sales of Xerox product, which the company makes. The company also announced it would increase spending on research and development by 7.5%.

President Tadahito Yamamoto stated; “We will still continue to sell copier based machines and printers, but we want to be known as a total solutions and services company dealing in office and document management rather than just a copier company. Hence, research and development and new technology are very important to us.”

- Sharp was ordered by the Fair Trade Commission to pay a fine of 261 million yen for attempting to fix prices with Hitachi of color LCD displays sold to Nintendo for its game consoles.

- Apparently Sharp employees are volunteering to teach a class to elementary schools about global warming. (most likely Sharp gets to hand out their solar calculators)

- Fujitsu announced it will close it’shard drive manufacturing plant and layoff 360 employees

- Microsoft signed a patent sharing agreement with Brother. It has signed similar deals with other MFP makers, HP, Samsung, Fuji, Epson and Kyocera. “Our partners and customers continue to demand collaboration as they run increasingly diverse IT environments using technology and solutions that rely on both proprietary and open source code” said Microsoft’s David Kaefer.

- Toshiba announced it will allow 16,700 employees to take second jobs while they are temporary leave.