Weekend MFP Notes from 2/15/09

Xerox is protesting a bid award given to a Ricoh dealer. The Westport Public School District of Connecticut awarded their contract to Advanced Copy Technologies, owned by Greg Gondak. The contract was for 60 months with b/w clicks at $0.009. Xerox claims that its subsidiary, CBS, should have won the bid because it was substantially less, including clicks at only $0.0042. The contract included 5 million clicks per quarter.

- Xerox announced it sold two of its X980 production print systems. These units have twin engines, and use flash fusing for top speed of 900ppm.

- Xerox announced it won a bid to provide 20 color MFPs to Fiat Automotive of England.

- Kodak gave an update on its future color inkjet press, called the Stream:
- 2500 ppm top speed
- 508-660mm wide web that move rolls of paper at 150-200 meters per minute
- Designed to compete against the HP Digital Web Offset press
- Will launch in early 2010

- In a study conducted by PIA/GATF, postcards made by a Kodak NexPress S3000 survived being delivered by the U.S. Postal Service with less marks than any other production color system tested.

- IKON won a bid from the Winchester School District of Indiana. The contract is for 5 years.

- In a survey completed by the Photizo Group the following was discovered about dealers who provide managed print services:
- even after an assessment is performed, only 52% of prospects end up signing up for a MPS contract
- The fastest growing segment of customer that is choosing MPS are those with 500-999 employees
- 92% of companies that try MPS renew their contracts

- Hewlett Packard claims that by the year 2011 that its printers will use 40% less energy than they do today.

- Hewlett Packard announced 0% interest lease programs to boost sales of its printers and MFPs.

- Microsoft, in an effort to increase sales, announced it will open Microsoft stores in the U.S., just like Apple Computer has done. Also considering this supposedly is Hewlett Packard.

- BERTL recently completed a test of the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1050e, and gave it the coveted “5 Star” award. The report can be purchased at www.BERTL.com. Example of review includes this statement; “BERTL was impressed with the system’s steel paper drawers, which we found to be very sturdily constructed – a key advantage for high volume applications”

- Oce’ announced it will sell its paper making division to Precision Paper Company. Oce’ will sell its plants in Guilford, CT, Charleston, IL and Corona, CA. Purchase price not announced.

- Panasonic launched a new desktop color laser AOI (all-in-one mfp) offering, called the KX-MC6000 series:
- 20ppm top speed
- 4 tandem OPC drum design
- A4 (letter/legal size only)
- Scan/copy/print/fax
- 50 sheet document feeder
- Optional automatic duplexer
- 3.6” full color LCD display
- 1200x1200dpi (does not offer true 8 bits per pixel)
- Can receive faxes into memory, and then preview them on the LCD
- Pricing not announced
- optional extended warranties do not include supplies

- In Japan, Panasonic has requested that 10,000 of its employees go out and buy 1,000 yen worth of Panasonic electronic items to boost company revenues.

- Some involved with the construction of Canon manufacturing plants in China are involved with scandal. Norihisa Oga, president of Oita, Japan based Daiko Contracting, demanded and received millions of yen from another contractor, Nichimatsu, after winning contracts to build plants in Hiratsuka. Major construction firm Kajima Corp. is suspected to have provided Daiko billions in yen in return for securing Canon contracts.

- Okidata announced that it plans on launching more floor standing A3 color LED MFPs during the ITEX trade show.

- Kyocera announced that it will bring 15 new MFP models to market in 2009, most of which will be color laser devices. The company also announced the formation of a dealer council, which will be led by Jim Oricchio, owner of Coordinated Business Systems.

- Ricoh announced it will resell DocuLex Archive Studio content management solution software. Packages for 10 users start at $11,994.00 MSRP.

- Ricoh showed its embedded software capabilities at the recent IBM Pulse conference in Las Vegas. Their booth showed IBM’s Tivoli Asset Management software running on the control panel of a Ricoh color MFP.

- Lexmark now shipping its T650 series of A4 b/w MFPs that offer speeds up to 53ppm. While the MSRPs start as low as $2500, the optional extended warranties do not include the expensive supplies. The black toner cartridge, with a yield of 36,000 pages, based on 5% coverage per page, sells for $508.20 each.

- US Express Leasing has changed its name to Tygris Vendor Finance and has offices in Chicago, Stamford and Parsippany.

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 11/17/08

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

- KIP provides more details on its new Color 80 wide format color system:
o Unlike most wide format color printers, this system uses toner and not ink
o Uses LED imaging instead of laser
o 600x600dpi (not 8 bits per pixel)
o Top speed of 2,160 square feet per hour (world’s fastest)
o 6 minute warmup time
o Holds 4 rolls of paper
o Total capacity of 6,000 square feed of media
o Can use plain paper, trace paper, film, gloss, up to 32lb. bond
o Maximum paper width of 36”
o Engine takes up 61” wide x 37.5” deep x 57” tall
o Weighs 2200 lbs.
o Needs a 220 volt, 16 amp circuit
o Accepts TIFF, JPEG, PNG, bitmap, GIF, PCS, TGA, RLE & RLC raster formats
o Accepts HPGL, HPGL/2, HP-RTL, PostScript, PDF & DWF vector formats
o Optional 2100 Scanner
 600x600 (8 bits per pixel)
 Up to 9.5” per second scanning for b/w
 Up to 4.1” per second scanning for color
 54” wide x 19.5” deep x 10.5” tall
 168lbs.
 Requires 120 volt outlet
o Optional stacker and fold unit
o MSRP for base engine and print controller = $105,985.00
 Optional premium RIP = $3700.00
 Optional 2100 scanner = $18,685.00

- Cooper’s & Lybrand study of office documents:
o 80% of corporate memory is on paper (contracts, memos, project plans, etc.)
o 90% of documents are merely passed along
o Average document gets copied 19 times in its life
o Average of $20 cost to file document
 $120 to find misplace document
 $220 to replace lost document
o 7.5% of all documents get lost
 This means if office generates 200 documents a week, it will lost 15 of them, costing company $3300
o 3% of all documents get misfiled
o 50% of office worker’s time is spent looking for information
o Only 5-15% of time is spent reading documents
o Currently, there are 4 trillion paper documents in the U.S. and is increasing 22% or 880 billion a year

- The British Columbia Biomedical clinic of Canada announced it has acquired Laserfiche software to manage its documents.
o Scans average of 10,000 records per day
o Eliminated 25 man hours per day used to file and retrieve documents

- The value of color on documents according to InfoTrends:
o Reduces visual search time by 80%
o Improves comprehension by 73%
o Increases retention by 78%

- Bozeman Deaconess Hospital of Montana announced it has purchased DocuWare to manage its documents:
o Saved $20,000 per month in payroll costs due to improved efficiencies
o Reduce patient wait times
o Eliminated 20 man hours per day in document tracking
o Eliminated 4 hours per week in old lab order search time
o Also purchased 12 Fujitsu high end scanners and 8 Canon MFPs
o Dealer who won the bid was J&H Office Equipment

- The Environmental Protection Agency of the federal government has filed a complaint against Oce’ for its plant in Fiskeville, Rhode Island for allegedly violating environmental law. Spokesman David Deegan says that the company failed to adequately capture pollution.

- Hewlett Packard announced it sold an Indigo ws4500 production color system to Weber Marking Systems of Arlington Heights, IL. In addition, it sold an Indigo 7000 system to Frecklebox, a print shop that specializes in variable data direct mail printing.

- Hewlett Packard hired Mike Feldman from IBM and made him Vice President and General Manager in charge of enterprise sale of its printers and MFPs. He will report to Lynn Pendergrass.

- Hewlett Packard won a bid to supply 850 scanning systems to UPS to reduce paper usage.

- Hewlett Packard announced it will discontinue the use of music written by Gary Glitter in its ads, after it found out that the artist was convicted of child molestation and porn.

- Hewlett Packard officially approved the use of some Neenah paper types with its Indigo production color systems.

- Hewlett Packard won a lawsuit against a company which made unauthorized cartridges for HP printers. LexJet of southern California was ordered to pay an undisclosed sum to HP for patent violation.

- Ricoh announced that in 2009, it will also offer a Creo print server for the new Aficio PRO C900 production color system, which currently only offers EFI Fiery solutions. It also announced that the official MSRP for the base print engine is $117,500.00.

- New rules for leasing given to sales reps of local Ricoh factory direct branches:
o 0.02968 rate factor for FMV, 36 months
o 0.02105 rate factor for FMV, 60 months
o Banks used include Wells Fargo, CIT, DLL, GE and Bank of America
o Maximum funding of 125% of MSRP of Ricoh products
o Apparently does not require that original lease documents be sent to bank used
o Policy is not to store equipment for customer if it is still under lease with a third party
o Not currently booking leases to:
 Real estate companies
 Mortgage companies
 Title companies
 Any request for exceptions require last two years’ financial statement

- Canon launched a new software solution called uniFLOW Output Manager, to help end users track copies and prints.

- Sharp announced that the base MSRPs of its new A4 Frontier series color laser MFPs, the MX-C311 and MX-C401 will be $7099 and $7995 respectively.

- Sharp announced it has purchased some more dealers and converted them into Sharp factory direct branches:
o Kearns Business Solutions, former Kyocera dealer, in Greenville, South Carolina, and will be run by Tom Pickens
o First Choice Business Machines of Seattle, WA, run by Dan Taylor, and has 8 locations in Washington.

- Several recent studies have shown that many inkjet printers require end users to change out inkjet cartridges even when the cartridges are not completely out of ink. One of the main reasons is due to a decrease in image quality when a cartridge runs low on ink. Contrast this with color laser MFPs, which suffer no decrease in image quality, and if under CPC contract, end users need not worry about wasted toner.

- Lexmark launched a new A4 color laser MFP, the X782E XL offering:
o Base MSRP of $4499.00
o Also available as print-only device, the C782n for $1999
o Top speed of 35ppm color and 40ppm for b/w
o Optional auto duplex
o 800MHz processor
o 768MB RAM
o Banner printing up to 48” long
o Optional stapling finisher
o Optional 5 bin mailbox output trays
o 1200x1200dpi (does not offer 8 bits per pixel)
o Black toner cartridge with 16,500 page yield, based on 5% toner coverage, for $183.00 each
o Color toner cartridges with 16,500 page yield each, for $410.00 each
o 11 second first b/w page out time
o 8” color touch screen LCD control panel
o 50 sheet document feeder
o Up to 75gsm paper weight handling
o Optional extended warranties do NOT include supplies

- InfoTrends predicts that the year 2010 will be the first year where the average solution sale will eclipse a hardware only sale in revenue. It also predicts that the amount of hardware-only providers could decrease by 50%.

- Kodak announced it won a bid to provide 30 each of the NexPress production color systems to print shop locations of Consolidated Graphics.

- Okidata started a “RED” program to allow its dealers’ sales rep to earn prizes for selling its color LED printers. The company also announced it will open up a factory direct branch in Argentina.

- Apparently if end users choose to buy cash, or use their own financing to get a Xerox copier, their click charge goes up as compared if they use Xerox’s leasing division.

- Xerox’s president, Ursula Burns gave out the following advice in an interview:
o Communicate – “Whenever you’re in a crisis you have to talk”
o Know the Culture – “work to build diversity”
o Have a Vision – show how to portray your company in the best of times
o People Matter – “the best strategy devised is worthless without a work force willing to adapt”
o Customers Matter Too – “the customer is the center of the universe” “customers aren’t always right, but you can’t tell them they’re wrong”
o Leadership is Key – “Good leaders are humble, focused and human. They put the enterprise before themselves”

- One of Xerox’s finest inventors, Christopher Snelling, pasted away. During his 44 years with Xerox, he received 101 patents.

- In another cost cutting move, Xerox laid off 50 workers in its Irish plant.

- Xerox announced it won a bid from IBM for MFPs, scanning and document management. What is worth mentioning is that IBM sold off its MFP and printer division (called InfoPrint) to Ricoh, yet did not award them the contract.

- The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, will be printed daily in New York on a Screen Truepress Jet520 production inkjet color printer at an Alphagraphics store. The unit can print up to 1200 newspapers an hour (each consisting of 48 tabloid pages)