Tidbits

- Lyra Research reported its view of worldwide sales of digital b/w MFPs in 2010:
o 78% of units placed were desktop units
o Shipments of Segment 3 (31-39ppm) A4 units up 90%, just under 80,000
o Segment 2 (21-29ppm) A4 units up 30% to 500,000
o Segment 1 (20ppm or slower) A4 units down 12%
o Segment 1 A3 units down 17% to 300,000
o Total A3 units down 150,000
o Total A4 units up 400,000
o Segment 4 (40-69ppm) A4 units up 10%
o Forecasts that total shipments will increase 4%, but total revenue will drop 10% to $16.3 billion

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-A maker of generic toner cartridges may be headed for bankruptcy. American TonerServ (ATS) of Rohnert Park, CA was on an acquisition spree back in late 2007 & 2008, scooping up iPrint Technologies, Image Technology Products, Mid-America Environmental, Pendl Companies, and Tonertype.

o In the first nine months of 2010, ATS had reported record revenue, and the firm announced in November that it was averaging 1,500 toner cartridge sales per day, a 50 percent increase compared to approximately one year ago..
o On December 30, ATS filed a form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in which the company said it has ceased normal business operations. The filing reads, “Management is now considering the future course of action, which may include requesting protection under the U.S. bankruptcy laws and/or a liquidation of the company’s remaining assets. In any event, the company does not expect to be able to resume any normal business operations. It is also unlikely that the company’s shareholders would receive anything for their shares in a bankruptcy proceeding or liquidation.”

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-Hewlett Packard announces a shakeup of its board of directors:
o Departing are Robert Ryan, John Joyce, Joel Hyatt and Lucille Salhany.
o Joining are Shumeet Banerji (CEO of Booz & Co.), Patricia Russon (former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent), Dominique Senequier (CEO of AXA), Meg Whitman (former CEO of eBay and ran for governor of California) and Gary Reiner (former CIO of General Electric)


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- Van Gansewinkel Company of Germany announced the first 100% recycled office paper, claiming that no trees have to be cut down for manufacturing. It claims that Van Gansewinkel Office Paper:
o uses 83% less water when made
o requires 72% less electricity when made
o 53% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions when made

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- Desktop laser MFP causes fire. San Diego fire department reports that a house in Rancho Bernado had $400,000 in structural damage and $200,000 worth of furniture damage due to an overheating desktop MFP. The make and model was not released.

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- Just like in some other Ricoh color MFPs, the company announced that if you choose the 1200x1200dpi high quality print mode in the new Aficio MP C300 and MP C400 color laser A4 MFPs, the machines slow down half speed to only 15ppm, as the laser must draw the image twice on the drum in order to achieve this resolution. The engines also have a maximum of only 4 bits per pixel.

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- Marvell, which makes print controllers, has been served with a patent infringement lawsuit from Advanced Processor Technologies of Frisco, Texas over a computer memory management patent

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- Notable Solutions Inc. (NSi) announced that version 6.0 of its popular AutoStore middleware solution is due by end of first half of 2011.

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-Has the consolidation begun? Canon announced that it will take over Oce’ operations in India. Employees from former Oce’ branches will now report to Kensaku Konishi, President and CEO of Canon India.

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- Former Xerox employee, inventor of Ethernet, and founder of 3Com Corp., Bob Metcalfe, announced he is now Professor of Innovation at University of Texas in Austin.

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- New company is formed to provide document capture middleware solutions, named DocSolid. Details:

o founded by Steve Irons, former founder of ImageTag KwikTag
o headquartered in Phoenix, AZ
o First product is AirMail2 featuring:
o Works with any scanner or MFP, because rather than an embedding an application in the device, end user just scans to a folder on the PC
o When user is ready to scan, they select command from the MailMan software loaded on to server
o Document to be scanned will be affixed with a barcode, which is printed on a label from a postage stamp printer
 Stamps use two-dimensional DataMatrix bar codes
 In contrast, KwikTag uses bar-coded Post-It Notes
o MailMan software reads bar-code, cleans up and formats images, and sends images to internal server location or to PostOffice, which is a cloud-based storage service
o $3995 for unlimited number of users
o $395 license for each scanning device
o Optional connectors to document management systems

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- In survey published by OpenText of internal medicine trainees, it was revealed that over two-thirds were spending more than 4 hours per day on documentation.

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- Street pricing seen in the print for pay marketplace:
o Xerox 700 Digital Color Press with external Fiery/LCT/booklet-making/stapling finisher for $50,500 with color clicks @ $0.049 and b/w clicks @ $0.0129. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Xerox 4112 b/w system w/external Fiery/booklet maker/3 hole punch/LCT for $39,200 with b/w clicks @ $0.004. 11”x17” billed as one click.
o Canon imageRUNNER 8085 w/controller/booklet-maker for $23,600 with b/w clicks @ $0.005. 11”x17” billed as one click.

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- According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), data breaches recorded in 2010:

o 41.8% from general business
o 26.1% from healthcare facilities
o 15.6% from government
o 12.3% from banking industry
o 8.5% from educational institutions

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- According to EHR survey released by Office of the National Coordinator(ONC) for Health IT of the U.S. Government:

o 81% of hospitals intend to seek HITECH/Meaningful Use stimulus dollars
o 41% of office-based physicians intend to seek stimulus dollars
o 90% of physicians who have purchased EHR are NOT on track to meet MU goals

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- PrintFleet, maker of managed print services software, based in Ontario, Canada, announced formation of an advisory board, which includes various channel executives including:

o Sam Errigo of Konica Minolta
o Kevin McCarthy of Modern Office Methods
o Doug Johnson of Supplies Network
o Gary Johnson of Laser Systems
o Lee Rummage of RJ Young
o Matthew McLeish of PartsNow!
o James Luquire of Synnex
o Michael Pietrunti of Kyocera
o Dave Collinson of Okidata

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- According to Lyra Research, the bad economy has caused businesses to re-evaluate the need for color output, and caused the sales of single-function b/w laser printers to grow 14% in units and 9% in total revenue in 2010.

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- Bagwell Marketing reports that shared mail business is growing between 10% and 15% annually. This is good news for printshops, as this means an increase in digital color print jobs from companies that wish to grow their business by advertising inserts in shared direct mail coupons campaigns.

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- Why should healthcare facilities invest in a document management system (like Prism Healthflow)? A document capture system could help organizations with the following Meaningful Use requirements:

o recording demographics as structured data for at least 80% of admitted patients
o reporting quality measures to the CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) such as the percentage fo diabetics with A1c under control or the percentage of hypertensive patients with blood pressure under control
o providing patients with electronic access to health information including lab results, problem lits, medication lists and allergies
o providing patients with an electronic copy of their discharge instructions and procedures at the time of discharge
o submitting electronic data to immunization registries
o exchanging key clinical information among providers electronically

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