Tidbits on the Copier/Printer/Software Industries for the Week of 12/28/09

In a study conducted by IBM, the following was stated:
- The average cost of ink in a printer ink cartridge is $10,000 per gallon
- Electronic forms are currently used by more than 1.4 million Army personnel worldwide costing $1.3 billion annually


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Results of a recent survey conducted by AIIM regarding implementation of scanning and document management:- 40% report a return on investment within 12 months
- 66% report a return on investment within 18 months
- 30% use outsourced services
- 30% have issue with quality of indexing
- 48% have a centralized, in-house scanning service
- 78% have some form of distributed scanning with MFPs
- 32% report that consumption of paper increased after implementing scanning
- 25% of documents are photocopied before they are scanned
- 31% of documents are destroyed after being scanned
- 32% of documents are archived off-site
- 38% of paper originated documents are scanned and archived electronically
- 51% of scanned documents are 100% born digital
- 37% of organizations are scanning over half of their incoming documents
- 6.5% of scanned documents are rejected or require intervention when scanning

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A maker of generic laser cartridges announced it is expanding due to growing demand caused by managed print services programs. West Point Products is opening up a new 110,000 square foot plant in Washington, Pennsylvania, which is in addition to 6 existing locations in the U.S.

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Parts Now!, a company that sells generic laser printer parts, announced that it has posted free downloads of most Hewlett Packard LaserJet service manuals, making it easier for dealers to offer managed print service programs for HP devices.

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Inkstop, a 150 location chain of stores that refill ink and toner cartridges, announced it is going out of business due to bankruptcy.

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According to white paper released by Kofax document imaging software: - Over 20 million tons of office paper is consumed each year in the U.S.
- Federal government consumes 110,000 tons of paper annually
- Cost to file a single paper document is $20
- Searching for a misfiled document costs $120
- Reproducing a lost document costs $220
- 90% of medical patient related info is still paper based
- 31% of every dollar spent on healthcare is spent on admin costs
- Only 8% of the country’s 5000 hospitals use automated electronic patient records
- Only 17% of the country’s 800,000 physicians use automated electronic patient records
- 75% of companies surveyed employ paper based processes to manage AP
- Average cost to process an invoice is $37
- Average time to process an invoice of 33 days
- Accounts payable staff spends 40% of their time researching response info
- Document capture software market grew by 7.7M in 2008
- By 2012, document capture software sales expected to net $.27 billion

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According to a study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine:- 90% of all patient information remains on paper
- Only 8% of 3,000 hospitals studied used even a basic electronic medical records (EMR) system
- Only 1.5% of non-federal U.S. facilities use a comprehensive EMR
- Only 17% of doctors are using even a basic EMR system
- 12% are going through an EMR system de-installation

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According to survey conducted by Oce’:
- Commonly quoted 7% average toner coverage per page is actually more like 16%
- Abandoned documents account for up to 25% of all print jobs
- On average, 30% of IT helpdesk support time is spent on printers/MFPs
- The average time it takes to print a 40 page document on a desktop printer is 5 minutes

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Adobe Corp. is warning users of a virus that can allow hackers to take over end user’s PCs. The virus can be embedded in a PDF, and be inadvertently unleashed on the PC after downloading the PDF attachment in email. Adobe has yet to release a fix to prevent this problem.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to review a court case that was lost by Xerox regarding how much tax it must pay in the state.

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ACS, a division of Xerox, won a $22 million contract to manage automated toll roads in North Carolina

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Visioneer, maker of scanners, announced it has named Andy Domnauer to Director of Enterprise Sales, Jim Tamo to Director of U.S. Sales, and Ruben Suazo as Director of Latin America Sales.

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Hewlett Packard and the National Basketball Association (NBA) have partnered to provide $80,000 in technology to 90 middle schools in the U.S. This includes:
- Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, San Francisco & Washington DC
- HP tablet PC’s
- HP PhotoSmart color inkjet AIOs
- HP LaserJet printers
- Access to NBA photos, footage and other materials
- Tickets to 50 NBA games

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Xerox plans on replacing the WorkCentre 7655, 7665 and 7675 color MFPs in 2010 with the 7755, 7765 & 7775 models. The only difference apparently in these Fuji-made models will be:
- Use 1.33GHz processor from Freescale instead of the 1.8GHz processor from AMD
- 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB of RAM
- The touch screen color LCD panel will have the new icons as other Xerox models

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Lyra Research stated the following on printer/MFP sales:
- worldwide unit sales in 2009 will decline 14.64%
- worldwide revenue in 2009 will decline 14.96%
- overall revenue will not increase until 2013
- worldwide units and revenue in 2013 will still be short of levels in 2007

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The looming new healthcare reform bill in Washington D.C. is raising concerns at Xerox. The company wants to modify the Medicare tax provisions in the Senate bill that would cut the company’s earnings. Martin Reiser, a lobbyist for Xerox, said a big concern was “whether a lot of the provisions meant to contain costs will actually do so. If they don’t work – and we won’t know for years – then the bill is a failure”

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According to Raymond James & Associates, IT shipments will increase 4.3% in 2010. FBR Capital Markets is projecting IT spending to increase 1.6% in 2010.

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In cost cutting moves, Dell Computer announced it will:- spend $120 million to transfer its manufacturing plant in Poland to Foxconn Technology
- lay off 700 workers at its Malaysian plant
- close its plant in North Carolina

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Hewlett Packard’s Vyomesh Joshi, who is Executive VP of its printer/MFP division, was interviewed by Bloomberg:- Printing market is “healthy”
- “2009 was a difficult year for printing hardware”
- “But supplies were fine. What that means is that printing is healthy – even with economic pressure,customers are still printing the content”
- Has posted 5 quarters of declining printer/MFP sales
- Plans to achieve the 15% to 17% profit margin he’s on the line to deliver to investors in 2010
- Printing unit is “poised for recovery and getting on the attack”
- Forecasting this quarter “double digit” growth in printer shipments
- The printing group accounted for 21% of HP’s $114.6 billion revenue last year and
3% of its $13.4 billion profit
- Company has shortages after orders picked up sooner than it expected
- To cut costs, HP is now shipping directly from Asian factories to some distributors and retailers instead of its own distribution centers (this will dramatically increase lead times for backorder fulfillment)
- “HP overall has a $60 billion supply chain. We have a fair share of that. When you have those kind of numbers, even a small percent of those numbers are a big number”
- “We don’t need to cut prices. In the market right now, our product, compared with any of our competition, is much better in terms of innovation, in terms of ease of use, in terms of quality, in terms of connectivity. That’s what the customer will be looking at”
- “What I can tell you is that the printing and imaging business is a great business with great opportunities. I want to make sure the transformational work I’ve started – I want to see that all the way to the end”

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Hewlett Packard is running ads to counter the growth of sales of Kodak color inkjet printers/MFPs. The ads claim that:
- 36% of Kodak printer owners have had problems with heir printers
- Products have won few patents or awards
- Kodak has received an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau

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Former IKON CFO, Robert Woods, is now CFO of SunGard Corp. SunGard is on of the world’s leading software and IT services companies with 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries. IKON is now a division of Ricoh.

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Ricoh’s InfoPrint division (which it is acquiring from IBM), announced that it has opened up its second Print Innovation Center. These high end production print showrooms, have on display various technologies, including the InfoPrint 5000, a high speed color inkjet system (actually made by Screen of Israel). The new center is in Shanghai, China, while the first on is in Boulder, Colorado

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Kofax angered many of its dealers (including IKON, a division of Ricoh), when it announced that 46% of its sales now come from its factory direct sales reps. CRO, Reynolds Bish, claims that this is necessary to move the company upstream into larger deals

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Iron Mountain, a large document storage firm, announced that its digital business now accounts for 7.5% of its $784 million in third quarter revenue. The company has installed Kofax technology in 150 locations in the U.S. to serve its customers

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Canon President, Tsuneji Uchida, stated the following in an interview with Forbes:
- maintains 55 yen year-end dividend despite Oce’ acquisition
- headed for a second straight year of profit declines
- “Building up our corporate strength for next year onwards has been out target this year, and we are on track to hit that target”
- “Considering where we were at the start of the year, we have made quite some progress”
- “I’m sure what we have done in preparation for a turnaround will ear fruit next year an d later”- “It’s not like we are planning to borrow money for the investment. We’d like to uphold our stable dividend payout policy”
- “Christmas sales last year were a disappointment, but this year out digital camera sals were quite strong, with sales returning to levels seen in 2007, which was a year of robust digital camera demand”

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NEC announced it will relabel the Konica Minolta bizhub C280 as the NEC IT28C6, the C360 as the IT36C6 and the C452 as the ITC45C6.

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Google Corp. is supposedly spending $25 million to acquire DocVerse Inc. of San Francisco. Details
- Founded by former Microsoft employees, Shan Sinhas and Alex DeNeui
- Will allow users to collaborate directly on Microsoft Office documents

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A Xerox sales agent buy a Savin/Riso dealer. Hughes Xerographic of Bellarie, West Virginia has acquired one of its competitors, Stenger Business Systems of Wheeling, which was owned by Tom Stenger. The Stenger dealership was originally founded by his father, Ralph Stenger in 1945, to sell and service Royal typewriters.

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NER Data Products Inc. of Glassboro, NJ announced it is selling its compatible printer supply and parts business to Clover Technology Group, Inc. The sale will include facilities in Denver (Colorado), Plano (Texas) and Glassboro.

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Samsung announced it has agreed to settle a lawsuit filed against the company by Kodak over infringement of two patents involved with digital cameras. The settlement will include a one-time penalty payment and a technology cross-license with ongoing royalty payments.

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Kyocera announced it has developed an LED printhead that could be used to create a b/w printer that operates at 1000ppm at 1200x1200dpi.

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Good news. According to a survey by Purchasing magazine, electronics buyers are saying they will be pushing more purchase orders in the first quarter than any time in the past two years.

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OfficeMax is suing former sales reps for breach of their non-compete contract when they left for rival W. B. Mason Co. Inc. in New England.


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