Basically the paper was an outline of the plain paper copier industry up until 1994 or 95. I used this paper to research a blog "Top 19 Old Copier Manufacturers That Faded Away".
Just the other day I had an Anon (Anonymous) response to the blog I wrote for the "final five", it seems I ticked someone off because I projected that Sharp would not be one of the final five left in the industry. ANON pointed out that although the blog was a nice read, they thought that my projection of Sharp was not correct because Sharp had just started operations of a 2nd manufacturing plant in China that was capable of producing 250,000 MFP's per year. I responded with the fact that I saw the press release that Sharp is gearing up for the anticipated of more demand, but I think it's more for the Chinese Market Place. Here's the press release. I'm also taking a guess that since the Great Flood in Thailand and the fact that one of Sharps copier manufacturing plants is located in the area of the Great Flood. The Sharp factory was not damaged however Sharp had problems with securing parts from other suppliers that were affected.
Which brings me to back to a certain paragraph in the white paper. History repeats its self right. The white paper predicted that only 7 to 8 copier manufacturers would be left in the global market place by 1997. Let's see if we can get this right:
Xerox, Ricoh, Sharp, Canon, Toshiba, Oce, Mita, Konica, Panasonic and Minolta. This would be 11 copier manufacturers that were players in 1994. I did not include Kodak due to the fact that their plain paper copier line was OEM'd by Canon. I can't remember when but Konica & Minolta merged thus leaving 8 manufacturers somewhere in 2002.
