Canon is making a bid to acquire all of Oce’. Details:
- Purchase price is roughly $1.1 billion, a 70% premium of Oce’s current stock price
- Cash consideration of offer is 730 million euros, while Oce’s total debt was 704 million euros
- Oce’ would remain a wholly owned division of Canon, running separate for now
- Oce’ management would stay in place for time being
- Oce’s three divisions will be Commercial Printing Systems, Wide Format Printing Systems and Business Services
- Steering committee will be formed to lead integration of two companies over next 3 years
- Oce’s management board would be Rokus Van Iperen, Mr. Kerkhove, & Mr. Schaaf from Oce’, as well as Toshizo Tanaka (CFO), Mr. Elverding & Mr. Baan from Canon, as well as three other Canon executives.
- Acquisition is supposed to conclude in spring of 2010
- According to Oce’ senior VP of corporate communications, Jon Hol, Oce’ began seeking a partner in August of 2008, and negotiations began with Canon in March, 2009
- Oce’ has 1,400 sales reps in the Americas
- Canon’s president and COO Tsuneji Uchida said; “We are delighted to welcome Oce’, the ideal partner in every respect, into the Canon Group. Through the merger of Canon and Oce’, we believe that we will be able to realize clear benefits, no only in the area of R&D, but also in terms of product mix and marketing and are confident that this winning combination will contribute greatly to our goal of becoming the overall No. 1 presence in the printing industry.”
- If Oce’ were to back out, they would have to pay Canon a 7.9 million euro penalty
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Xerox provided a few details about the sales of the ColorQube color wax copier so far:
- Claims that over half the units sold replaced competitive color or b/w MFPs
- 25% of clicks are “useful color pages” (contain b/w and very small amount of color)
- 50% of clicks are “everyday color pages” (some color)
- 25% of clicks are “expressive color pages” (lots of color)
- “color pages are running higher than expected”
- Would not disclose how many units were sold so far
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Xerox announced it will now offer an embedded version of Equitrac usage tracking/control software for its EIP (extensible interface platform) equipped MFPs.
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Xerox is using a test report from Buyers Labs Inc. (BLI) to tout that its MFPs are faster and more productive as network printers than its competitors. However, what Xerox may not tell your customer is that the tests that were done used “banner sheets”, to separate the print jobs. Banner sheets are rarely used by end users, as they are considered wasteful. However, since many MFPs treat these banner pages as separate print jobs, they process slower than a Xerox MFP that treats banner pages as part of the print job. Summary: if customer does not use banner pages, they most likely will see no speed increase with a Xerox.
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Dell Computer reported its last quarter’s financials: - Revenue down 15% to $12.9 billion
- Income down 54% to $337 million
- Large enterprise business revenue fell 23%
- SMB (small to medium size businesses) revenue fell 19%
- Consumer revenue down 10$
- Public sector revenue down 7%
- Perot Systems division revenue fell 12% to $629 million
- Desktop PC revenue fell 26%
- Desktop PC units fell 15%
- Mobile PC revenue fell 14%
- Server sales fell 6%, units down 7%
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Premier Purchasing Partners, which is a healthcare alliance of more than 2200 hospitals and 63,000 healthcare sites, announced that it will now offer Konica Minolta, Ricoh & Xerox products to its membership. The new contract, with these offerings, will be launched 1/1/2010.
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ABBYY Software Ltd., the OCR manufacturer headquartered in Russia, announced that Ingram Micro will distribute its products to resellers (VARs & dealers) in the U.S.
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Secunia, a network security alert firm, announced that denial of service network attacks could be carried out using a vulnerability found in some Hewlett Packard Color LaserJet models.
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Okidata announced that it will relabel Nuance document management software (PaperPort) as an option for its MFPs and call it the Okidata Desktop Capture Solution.
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Ricoh’s factory direct branches will now offer the ability for their sales reps to:
- bundle in software and computer hardware into a lease
- bundle in professional services/network service, by a pass thru approach on a lease, so end users can pay for the service monthly
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The U.S. Postal Service announced it will end 2009 with a $.38 billion loss
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Lexmark announced it will now offer Ringdale’s FollowMe for its printers and MFPs that allow for an embedded application. FollowMe enables end users to enter a PIN code, Windows login, ID card reader or biometric reader to authenticate and track usage.
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Due to downsizing, Lexmark is now trying to lease 135,000 square feet of office space in Lexington, Kentucky.
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Another imaging software company plans on entering the market in the U.S. to compete with Nuance eCopy and NSI’s AutoStore:
- New Dynamic Solutions (NDS) is based in Brugge, Belgium and is now selling products in Europe
- Will enter U.S. in early 2010
- In Europe is now selling its “ScanFlow Suite” to work with Ricoh (ScannerVision),
Konica Minolta (Document Navigator) and Toshiba (eBRIDGE Capture & Store)
- Founded in 1983
- CEO is Rene Brunt, who formerly worked for Ricoh
- Is a C++ based application
- Employs 25 people
- Software is embedded in the MFP, and uses color LCD touch screen control panel
- Approximately $223 for entry level “Express” version
- $748 for “Office” version
- Each additional MFP licensse is $148
- Optional modules for OCR/ICR, forms recognition, barcode recognition ($298 to $1497 each)
- Customizable control panel
- Has two dozen connectors to third party applications
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Quark of Denver, makers of QuarkXPress desktop publishing software, announced it is launching a web-to-print website, so it can better compete with Adobe InDesign. The website, QuarkPromote.com, allows end users to use a free design tool, and choose from hundreds of templates, and then order prints from a Sir Speedy, PIP or Signal Graphics printshop.
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Since Xerox bought ACS, HP bought EDS and Dell bought Perot Systems, many have speculated if Computer Sciences Corp. is also up for sale. According to company president, David Booth; “We like our position. We truly believe that there’s a role for companies like ours in the market”
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According to a Chinese newspaper, Toshiba is considering selling off its notebook computer manufacturing division to Asustek of China. Asustek makes computer motherboards, and its own PCs, selling in the U.S. through Best Buy and other retailers.
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According to survey conducted by the Photizo Group, half of the companies that are using a managed print services program, have done so by partnering directly with an equipment manufacturer.
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Canon announced it won a 4 year managed print service contract from Resorts World, which runs hotel/resorts in Asia.
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As a Canon channel partner, We are very excited to see this partnership happen!
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