IDC reported worldwide printer/MFP shipments for third quarter:
- B/w laser printer and MFP unit shipments were up 14%
- MFP units shipped were 17 million, representing 63% of all devices (laser and inkjet)
- Color laser MFP units up 1.3%
- Laser units trail inkjet by 42%
- Laser MFP market value of $2.8 billion
- Laser MFP units represented 11% of total market
- HP was top brand in units, followed by Canon, Epson, Brother and Samsung
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In an effort to drive down the value of the Japanese yen, and help many Japanese equipment providers who rely on U.S. sales, the Japanese government announced it would make available $115 billion in three year loans at 0.1% interest to Japanese firms. (Japan’s companies lose a combined $369 million in annual operating profit for each 1 yen appreciation against the U.S. dollar according to Daiwa Research)
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According to Kodak, in regards to color inkjet printer usage:
- Average consumer prints 1,500 pages per year
- Kodak shipped 800,000 printers in last three quarters
- Last year, during same time period, shipped 400,000 units
- In contrast, HP shipped 18.4 million units
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According to Jim Cohen, Executive VP of Consolidate Graphics:
- print shop revenues are down 25%-50%
- Before, 9/11/2001, there were 50,000 printing companies
- By 2003, there were only 35,000
- Predicts that by 2010, there will only be 20,000
- Own 70 different printshops
- 66 of the printshops they own, have digital presses
- Own 70 HP Indigos
- Own 30 Kodak NexPress’s
- Own 25 Xerox iGen’s
- Own some Xeikon’s
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Hewlett Packard hired QualityLogic to perform tests of print quality and reliability on several desktop color laser printers. The test results revealed:
- Kyocera product had 2.5 times more unacceptable print quality pages as compared to HP
- Kyocera unit had to have its amorphous silicon ceramic drum cleaned every 2,600 pages, and took up to 15 minutes
- Kyocera unit had to have its waste toner container replaced every 2,650 pages
- Ricoh product had 3.5 times more unacceptable print quality pages as compared to HP
- Dell product had 3.5 times more unacceptable print quality pages as compared to HP
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Gartner Inc., a leading research firm that monitors the printer/MFP industry, announced it will spend $64 million in cash to acquire one of its competitors, AMR Research.
Gartner also stated that computer server shipments are down 17% and server revenue is down 15%.
According to Gartner, providing data storage as a service is on of the top 10 technologies that solutions providers cannot afford to ignore in 2010.
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Hewlett Packard claims that the country of India is a huge growth market for printers and MFPs. Apparently for every employee that an IT firm takes on in India, generates 2,500 pages of printed material during the recruitment process.
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Lexmark won a managed print services contract from The Rexel Group. Details:
- headquartered in France
- distributor of electrical supplies
- has 30,000 employees
- 2,300 offices in 34 countries
- 5 year contract
- Will reduce costs 20% to 60% depending on country
- Reduced number of devices by 20%
Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from CZ Insurance of The Netherlands. Details:
- 3 year contract
- has 3,500 employees
- has 3.3 million customers in Europe
- Covers 60 million prints per year
- New hardware installed includes LaserJet M5035XS MFPs and LaserJet P4515x printers
IKON, a division of Ricoh, won a large managed print services bid at a Pennsylvania university. Clarion University replaced 540 Hewlett Packard printers with 27 color MFPs and 44 b/w MFPs. Total volume per year is 6 million b/w pages and 250,000 color pages. The university decided to make a change when it realized it was spending $60,000 per year just on print cartridges.
Innerworkings Inc. of Chicago, won a print management contract from Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, headquartered in Marysville, Ohio.
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The Business Equipment Research & Testing Laboratories (BERTL) announced it has given its highest award, 5 Stars, to the new integrated eCopy solution offered by Konica Minolta, where the solution can be accessed right from the color LCD control panel of the bizhub MFP.
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Mail Boxes Etc. aka The UPS Stores, gave out its annual outstanding Sales Support Award to Konica Minolta, for the second time in last 3 years
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According to survey conducted by Ricoh, the following responses were collected from businesses in countries who are trying to cut back on printing waste:
- France = 43.5%
- Italy = 42.7%
- Germany = 41.7%
- England = 38.5%
- Only 33% of companies claim to have implemented a strategy
- Total spent on documents per year in Europe = 14 billion euros
- 32% of business owners allow employees to do what they like
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Due to the acquisition of IKON by Ricoh, Canon has ceased providing all technical support to IKON as of 12/1/2009. Apparently, IKON published a letter to its customers stating that it had Canon’s approval to get support from other Canon dealers. Canon retaliated with a letter stating that it and its dealers will not provide support for Canon machines in field under current IKON service contracts.
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A dealer in Georgia wins a document management bid. Computer Troubleshooters NRD, using Cabinet NG software and Kodak scanners won bid from National EMS, an ambulance service company. The company claims it will save the customer 80 labor hours per week with the new solution.
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Sharp named Rich Boomsma Senior Vice President of U.S. Sales. In his previous 9 years with Sharp, he worked with Government and Major Account Sales and Dealer Sales. Prior to Sharp, Rich spent 28 years with Xerox.
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Fuji of Japan announced it has hired a champion Sumo wrestler, Hakuho, to promote its printers and MFPs (which are sold under Xerox name in U.S.) The company wants to promote the products strong reliability to the Asian markets.
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According to some industry analysts, Canon will be launching a program to authorize copier dealers in the U.S. to sell its products with the Hewlett Packard name on them. In theory, this would allow the company to create another wholesale distribution channel, and open up more distribution in cities where it already has Canon branches and Canon dealers.
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Xerox closed on $2 billion in unsecured notes to help finance acquisition of ACS. $1 billion will mature in 2/2015 with 4.25% interest, $650 million will mature in 12/2019 at 5.625% interest and $350 million will mature in 12/2039 at 6.75% interest.
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Xerox announced that as part of the deal to buy ACS, it will take on $3.5 billion in debt, and pay out $52 million to ACS, founder, Darwin Deason. This is in addition to the $800 million in stock that he will receive.
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Google is about to launch its first computer operating system, called “Chrome”, which it hopes will compete with Microsoft Windows. Google stated that one of the reasons it will be more reliable is; “We want to get out of the business of printer drivers. All the problems related to drivers we want to go away.” This quote comes from Linus Upton, Google’s engineering director who has a new “wonderful printing solution”.
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Forrester Research gave out its rankings on leaders in enterprise content management:
- Leader in traditional ECM suite providers:
- IBM
- EMC
- Oracle
- OpenText
- Strong Performers, but lack breadth and sophistication of above:
- Hewlett Packard
- Hyland Software
- Microsoft
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According to RMG Enterprises, the image capture software market appears to be bouncing back from the recession. Three vendors, Datacap, Top Image Systems and Kofax, all reported revenue growth during the last quarter.
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According to Tenon Recovery, an insolvency specialist, 9 out of 10 printshops are in danger of collapse due to the economy.
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In an interview with Charles Holliday, chairman of DuPont, he related a story about his visit to Canon’s headquarters in Japan. He took a team to visit Canon’s CEO, Fujio Mitarai, and at end of visit, he noticed that someone had put a brand new Canon digital camera on each of his employee’s chairs. Mr. Holliday and his staff wondered what to do, as their company has an ethics policy which prevents them from accepting such a gift. They wondered if they would offend Mr. Mitarai if they returned the gifts. When they returned the gifts to Canon and explained why, Mr. Mitarai said; “you are a step above everybody else we deal with…what other company would have returned the cameras for such a good reason?” Canon has since adopted a similar policy.
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Three men were arrested in Bensalem, Pennsylvania after they were caught ordering $90,000 worth of Xerox Phaser color printer supplies, and never paying for them using three shell companies.
Wayne Prinkey, a 79 year old man in Springfield, PA, was arrested for making fake $20 bills with a color copier and attempting to use them at a local store.
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Have customers who wish to print from their Apple iPhone? As you may know, this cell phone does not offer Bluetooth technology for remote printing. Instead, an application named “Print Magic”, was launched, and sells for $6.99 and supposedly allows customer to print via WiFi to a printer connected to a Macintosh
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Toshiba announced it has hired a former DANKA executive as VP of Operations. Jim Hawkins, formerly Senior VP of Field Operations for DANKA, will now report to Wayne Wilkinson, Senior VP and GM of Toshiba’s copier division in Irvine, CA.
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Electronics For Imaging(EFI), maker of Fiery print controllers, announced it won a patent litigation case against Durst Fototechnik of Germany, over EFI’s white ink technology used in its VUTEK large format color inkjet printers.
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eCopy and EMC won a bid for document management at Easton Vance Corp., an investment management firm. The customer plans on scanning 200,000 records per month into the Documentum application.
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Are Ricoh dealers providing their customers with new parts or used parts? Equipment Brokers Unlimited of Van Nuys, CA announced that it is expanding its used Ricoh parts division due to increased sales of used parts to dealers. The company claims that used parts are 40%-80% less expensive than buying new parts from Ricoh.
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