Copitex Presents: Weekend MFP Industry Notes Newsletter

25 Feb

Copitex Presents: Weekend MFP Industry Notes Newsletter

Michael Kates Boston Copier Sales, MFP News, Muratec, News 0

- More details on new Samsung CLX-8650ND and CLX-8640ND color A4 MFPs:

51ppm and 40ppm top speeds respectively
4 tandem OPC drum design
polymerized toner technology
replaces the CLX-8540ND and CLX-8540NX
Base MSRPs of $8340 and $6948
light gray plastic exterior with black accents
maximum duty cycle of 200K/month
- recommended volume of 7K/month
toner yields of 20,000 pages each, based on 5% coverage per page
- drums have yield of 40,000 pages
document feeder holds up to 100 originals
- scans both sides of original at same time
- top speed of 35opm
$367 for fax board
7” color touch screen LCD control panel
comes standard with 520 sheet paper drawer and 100 sheet bypass
- $817 for second 520 sheet drawer
- $1101 for three more paper drawers
$1130 for stapling finisher
built-in print controller
- 1GHz processor
- 1GB RAM
- 320GB hard drive
- 10/100/1000BaseT & USB ports standard
- PCL & PostScript print drivers
- scan to hard drive/USB/email/FTP/SMB

- Samsung announced that it signed up RJ Young Co., one of Canon’s largest independent dealers in the U.S., to be authorized to sell its line of digital b/w and color copiers.

RJ Young is headquartered in Nashville, TN
has 18 locations across 5 states
400 employees
COO is Hunter McCarthy

- Samsung announced that it signed up Modern Office Methods (MoM), one of Ricoh/Lanier’s largest independent dealers in the U.S., to be authorized to sell its line of digital b/w and color copiers:

Steve Bandy is Senior VP
Kevin McCarthy is President and CEO
also authorized to sell Canon
headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio
also has locations in Zanesville, Columbus and Dayton, Ohio

- Samsung now shipping two new A3 color MFPs, the CLX-9252NZ and CLX-9352NA featuring:

top speeds of 25ppm and 35ppm respectively
4 tandem OPC drum design
polymerized toner technology
8.9” touchscreen color LCD control panel
39 second warmup time
120K/mo to 150K/mo max duty cycles
weighs 241lbs.
document feeder holds up to 100 originals
- does NOT scan both sides of original at same time
600x600dpi output resolution
- top speed prints at 2 bits per pixel
- slower speed at 4 bits per pixel
optional 600dpi fax board
comes standard with 520 sheet paper drawer and 100 sheet bypass
- maximum paper capacity with options of 3,140 sheets
- supports banner printing up to 47.2”
Finishing options include stapling finisher or booklet making finisher
- hole punch option
built-in print controller
- 1GHz processor
- 10/100/1000BaseT and USB ports
- 1.5GB RAM
- 320GB hard drive with data security kit standard
- PCL and PostScript print drivers standard
- scan to email/TWAIN/
Also launched were the SCX-8230NA (30ppm) and SCX-8240NA (40ppm), which are A3 b/w MFPs, based on similar platform as color models above.

- EFI announced it won the “2012-2013 International Print Technology Award” from Deutscher Drucker for its Digital StoreFront, Pace, PrintSmith, Monarch and Radius software.

- EFI announced that the Gordon Flesch Company, a large multistate Canon dealer headquartered in Madison, WI, has received EFI Fiery Professional Certification.

VP of Sales is Kelly Moran

- EFI’s Fiery FS100 Pro color server earned a “Perfect” score from the Flemish Innovation Center for Graphic Communication, based on results of multiple tests of color print samples.

- Kyocera (aka Kyoto Ceramic Company of Japan) announced changes to management:

Tetsuo Kuba is now Chairman
Tatsumi Maeda is now Vice Chairman
Gogo Yamaguchi is now President
Makoto Kawamura has resigned

- Toshiba to replace its president? According to Reuters News Service:

Toshiba will replace current president Norio Sasaki with current Senior Executive VP, Hisao Tanaka, who has served in Purchasing Dept. and PC divisions.
Sasaki led the company’s growth into nuclear energy plants, including sizeable acquisitions

- Canon now shipping the new imageRUNNER ADVANCE C2225 and C2230 color A3 MFP featuring:

25ppm and 30ppm top speed respectively
replaces the C2020 and C2030 models
Base MSRPs of $6615 and $9660
4 tandem OPC drum design
uses Canon’s pQ polymerized toner
- optional 101 key keyboard is $110 but requires $250 worktable
7” color touchscreen LCD display
unlike all other imageRUNNER ADVANCE models, instead of a “cashmere beige” colored plastic exterior, these two models are light gray
document feeder holds up to 50 originals and scan up to 51opm
- does NOT scan both sides of original at same time
comes standard with 1,170 sheet paper supply
- comes standard with 500 and 520 sheet paper drawers and 100 sheet bypass
- maximum paper supply with options is 2,270 sheets
  - $1523 for two 550 sheet drawers
  - $200 for envelope feeder kit
  - up to 12”x18” paper handling
Finishing options include:
- $2835 for floor standing, 50 sheet stapling finisher
- $4200 for booklet finisher, up to 16 sheet booklets
- $1523 for inner finisher with 50 sheet stapling
black toner yield of 23,000 pages based on 5% coverage
- color toners yield 19,000 pages each based on 5% coverage
$840 for fax board, with 2^nd line for $525
built-in print controller
- uses Advanced imageCHIP System Architecture
- like other models, Canon refuses to publish speed of processor
- $240 for web access software kit
- 2GB RAM
- 80GB hard drive, includes erase feature
  - $341 for encryption kit
  - $1050 for removable hard drive kit
- 10/100/1000BaseT & USB ports standard
  - $260 for Silex WiFi
- $630 for extra memory, but requires $210 dual USB port kit
- PDF, XPS print drivers are $$578
  - PCL print driver is $840
  - PostScript print driver is $1260
- $473 for encrypted secure print kit
- $840 for barcode print kit
- $1050 for secure watermark kit
- includes scan to email/SMB/FTP/WebDAV
  - $1155 for Universal Send Advance Features Set
    - trace and smooth PDF
    - Adobe Reader extensions
    - Office Open XML support
    - $945 for scan to encrypted PDF
    - $1050 for PDF digital device signatures
- comes standard with OCR kit for scan to searchable PDF

- Canon launched the “MREAL System”, featuring:

Mixed Reality, showing virtual objects with the real world, at full scale and in 3D
custom development for customers in manufacturing, automotive, construction, aerospace, medical, defense and entertainment verticals
can examine, modify, manipulate, discuss, analyze or present designs
system consists of a head-mounted display (HM-A1) and MP-100 software
- HM-A1 includes two video cameras, located in front of each eye
- pricing not announced

- Canon announced it won the “2013 Solutions Line of the Year Award” from Buyers Labs Inc. for its uniFLOW software.

sourced from NT-ware Inc. of Germany
- Founded in1998 by Karsten Huster
- has offices in Germany, Babylon, NY and Singapore
- has total of 80 employees

- Canon announced that it will start moving into its new North American headquarters building in Melville, NY:

cost of $500 million to build
company received $100 million in government aid
700 employees move in this week, with another 600 moving in April
668,000 square feet of space

- Canon announced the new “Preferred Accounts Program” for its wide format printer customers featuring:

Large Format Fleet Assessment, a data-driven, automated assessment of existing fleet with analysis tools to identify cost savings and optimization opportunities
Large Format Fleet Monitoring to monitor usage of large format devices, copy, print and scan activity
Enterprise Wide Service Reporting to identify ongoing equipment and service activity
Ongoing Assessment and Change Management provides real-time data about utilization of devices

- Lexmark announced that its study revealed that the average life of a laser printer should be 48 months, based on increasing device failure rates due to heavy use and wearing mechanics.

- Lexmark announced it won a Perceptive imageNOW electronic content management (ECM) solution and manage print services contract from Juicy Couture, which runs 100 women’s clothing stores in the U.S.

- Lexmark announced that the Walt Disney Company won a 2012 Huntington Bank Innovation Award for its accounts payable automation system, which is powered by Lexmark’s Perceptive Intelligent Capture solution.

- Lexmark’s Jeff Metze, Industry Manager for Education, stated that the visitors to Lexmark’s booth at the recent Educational Technology Conference in Orlando, FL were most interested in:

printing from mobile devices
output management and control

- Kodak claims that it fulfilled an order for 40+ DigiMaster production b/w systems in just 90 days, built and shipped within Q4 of 2012.

- More bad financial news for Sharp. According to Reuters News Service:

Hon Hai Precision (aka Foxconn) of Taiwan has decided not to invest money into Sharp, as Sharp would not give up executive control to Hon Hai.
This means that Sharp will have to work with its main lenders to draw up a business plan to convince shareholders and creditors that Sharp can survive its ongoing difficulties with debt.
“We cannot make a plan based on something that is uncertain. For us, it’s over.”, said a banking source who declined to be identified.

- Ricoh gave out more information on its latest restructuring:

o dealer sales now account for 34% of total sales in the U.S., and goal is to grow to 40% by end of 2013
o has 4 regions in wholesale dealer support division, each run by a VP
o dealer production print support team of 6 covering U.S.
o On direct branch side, employs 190 production print specialists in U.S.

- Ricoh announced it won a managed print services contract from the University of Northern Iowa.

- Ricoh announced it sold an InfoPrint 5000 production color inkjet system to Pinnacle Data Systems of Birmingham, Alabama, running a volume of 8 million/month.

- Ricoh loses court case involving its acquisition of Danka Europe:

lost its appeal for a larger share of the cash proceeds from the 2009 wind-up of Danka
Danka Europe was acquired by Ricoh in 2007
Danka entered voluntary liquidation in 2009 after it sold its US operations to Konica Minolta
Ricoh was to be paid, according to English court ruling in 3/2013, but Ricoh disputed the amount it was offered.
All 3 judges in the Court of Appeal ruled that Ricoh had no grounds to expect a larger payout.

- Xerox announced it will launch in 3^rd quarter, the Color 8250 Production Press. Details:

is based on Xerox iGen4
top speed of 138ppm
cut sheet design
up to 2 million/month duty cycle
optional rollfeed

- Hewlett Packard reported results of its 1^st quarter financials:

net income down 16% to $1.2 billion
total revenue down 6% to $28.4 billion
is planning on getting rid of 27,000 employees by end of 2014 to reduce costs by $3.5 billion/year
planning on next CEO coming from within company
printer/MFP division margins up 3.9%
- total printer unit shipment volume down 11%
- commercial printer revenue down 9%

- Hewlett Packard announced that it supported Ghanaian police in intercepting 20,000 fake printer cartridges, that were going to be sold as HP genuine supplies for HP printers and MFPs.

- Hewlett Packard announced it sold an Indigo 7600 production color system to Hagadone, a printshop in Honolulu, Hawaii.

- Hewlett Packard announced that 12 of its Indigo division employees received the Electronic Document Professional (EDP) certification from Xplor International.

- Hewlett Packard is planning on re-entering the tablet PC market, launching the “Slate7”, which is based on Google Android operating system, has 7” color touchscreen LCD, for $169, according to several reports.

- Another group buying copier dealers? Apogee Corporation announced:

founded in London, England in 2003
has now acquired a total of 17 copier dealers in England
In 2/2010, LMS Capital invested $11.8 million in Apogee to fund more acquisitions
2012 total sales of $110 million
authorized for Canon, Ricoh, Toshiba and Samsung
branched out into telecom and managed IT services
plants to expand into Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France and Italy

- The other copier dealer acquisition group based in England, Danwood, was forced to restate its financials:

was originally recognizing 100% of equipment related revenue up front on some 674 managed print services rental contract since 2004
forced to go back and spread the hardware revenue over the life of the MPS contract
had to reduce previously reported revenue for 2005 through 2010 by $83 million
had to report a loss in excess of $120 million from 2010 and 2011

- Westbrook Technologies, maker of Fortis electronic content management software, announced:

new VP of Sales is Peter Ransome
CEO is Einar Kaukeland
now has 24,000 customers
sales up 14%
FortisBlue is web-based app
will be launching new module aimed at healthcare vertical
has 53 resellers in the U.S., but most of sales come from Ricoh branches (legacy IKON)
will be conducting seminars across the U.S., entitled; “Synergy 2013”

- According to article in the New York Times newspaper, sales of fax machines are still booming in Japan:

in 2012, Japanese households purchased 1.7 million of old-style thermal paper roll fax machines
in contrast, the Smithsonian Museum in the U.S. is adding two fax machines to its historical collection
Japanese Cabinet Office reports that 100% of businesses and 45% of private homes still have fax machines
Banks are using fax machines, as customers are worried about safety of the personal information if they were to use online banking

- Applied Imaging, a Ricoh/Kyocera dealer in Michigan, announced it won a managed print services contract from Orthopaedic Associates of Michigan

also announced that it has acquired Michigan Business Systems, a local competitor.

- More info on Notable Solutions Inc. (NSi) acquisition of the output management solutions part of Barr Systems:

Barr was founded in 1978 as a maker of software for the lumber industry
In 1980, branched out into a print server that connects, routes and converts AFP, IPDS, Metacode and related legacy datastreams into PostScript
In 2008, launched the Enterprise Output Management (EOM) division, to manage output of printers and MFPs, which is division being acquired by NSi
two of Barr’s largest installations are U.S. Social Security Administration and R.R. Donnelley
Details on Barr EOM, now known as NSI Output Manager:
- scalable Windows server application
- utilizes an SQL database
- Windows-based administrative console
- Windows or web-based interface
- embedded MFP pull printing
- based on concept of document sources and document destinations
  - sources can be PC print queues, mainframe apps, existing files or folders, incoming email, or scanned images from scanner or MFP
  - Destinations can be any kind of printer or MFP, or electronic information delivery via email or the web
- supports programmable and ad hoc rules, actions and process that define workflows
- job splitting, format conversion, VDP, load balancing, failover and scheduling
- usage reporting
- MSRP of $4995 for core server
  - additional charge for console for user
  - $1995 to $7995 for various document sources, destinations, and transformation/modification tools
NSi will stop selling YSoft SafeQ (HQ in Czechoslovakia) output management solutions, but will continue to support
Gabriel Schwartzman, CEO of Barr, is now VP of Output Management for NSi.
- He will lead 20 employees in new office in Gainesville, Florida

- AIIM (Association for Image and Information Management) released survey results:

only 23% of organizations using Microsoft SharePoint are using 3^rd party scanning and capture software
only 15% are doing any forms processing
- 20% are completely satisfied that their needs are being met

- AIIM stated it is expecting record attendance for its annual conference in March at Hyatt Regency New Orleans, providing evidence of growing usage of document management systems (DMS) and electronic content management systems (ECM).

- ReadSoft of Sweden, maker of document capture and account payable software solutions, announced:

revenue last quarter up 22%
software license sales up 25%
North American president is Bob Fresneda
CEO is Per Akerberg
U.S. sales up 30%
total annual revenue of $121 million

- Kofax of Irvine, CA, maker of document capture solution software, reported info on its last quarter:

9% decline in revenue
25% decrease in software license sales
CEO is Reynolds Bish
last half revenue of $123.8 million

- Papercut of Melbourne, Australia, which makes cost recovery solution software that competes against Nuance Equitrac and Pharos, announced:

it now has 3 employees to support customers in the U.S., working in office in Portland, Oregon
charges license fees by user, not by server
supports PCL and PostScript print drivers, but not XPS
support via email is free, but phone support is part of optional annual support

- ABBYY of Russia, maker of OCR software and document capture solutions, announced:

started in 1989 making software to translate Russian into English
In 1993, launched FineReader OCR software
1,200 employees worldwide
has 30,000 million users of its software worldwide
other products include:
- PDF Transformer
- FlexiCapture
- Recognition Server
- Invoice Reader
has 5 channel support managers covering U.S. and Mexico
largest reseller is Xerox (including Global locations)

- OCR Lawsuit update:

1/16/2013 marked the 5^th anniversary of the patent infringement lawsuit filed by Nuance against its OCR (optical character recognition) solution competitors, including ABBYY of Russia
lawsuit is still working its way through U.S. District Court
at issue are 8 OCR patents issued between 1992 and 2004
patents were issued to Caere, Palantir and ScanSoft, all of which were acquired by Nuance

- Adobe announced results of survey of tablet computer users:

55% of tablet users use device to purchase products and services
- 28% of smartphone users use their device for purchasing
25% who don’t shop now on mobile devices, plan on using mobile apps to shop in 2013
Most influence over mobile purchasing decisions comes from:
- Friend = 88%
- emails from company = 71%
- online ads = 68%
- Facebook = 52%

- Foxconn (aka Hon Hai Precision), according to Nikkei News Service of Japan, is “freezing expansion plans” at the main plant in China, due to decline in Apple iPhone 5 sales.

- SafeNet announced result of survey:

35% of security professional in the U.S. are not confident they are using the right data security technologies
59% said their data would not be safe during a breach
65% expect to suffer a data breach in next 3 years
31% acknowledge they suffered a breach in past
95% maintained or increased spending on data security
51% feel that they are not spending enough on security
19% are confident in ability to protect their organizations from breach

- Sage Group announced it is selling off its ACT! and SalesLogix software division to Swiftpage for $101.2 million.

- First To File Inc. of San Mateo, CA, maker of document management solutions, announced it was acquired by CPA Global.

First To File founded by James Bergeron
also has office in Boise, Idaho
CPA Global CEO, Peter Sewell stated; “There is a clear trend within the IP community to move from paper to electronic document storage, driven by technological advances and changing business practices, as well as cost and sustainability considerations.”

- InfoTrends announced the top 10 trends for printing industry in 2013:

digital color printing will increase from $29.6 billion to $39.5 billion by 2016
digital wide format printing will continue its 7% CAGR
inkjet will accelerate migration from offset to digital
enhanced substrates will drive digital, including rugged synthetics, pressure sensitive stocks, specialty media, pre-scored, ready-to-print dimensional stock, new photobook media
web-to-print will manage marketing supply chains
54% of business-to-business firms will increase its spending on content marketing
hyper-personalization drives digital print, like direct mailers with personalized map directions and printed materials with PURLs linked to preapproved applications
trigger-based marketing meets customer preferences
mobile marketing will change communications using QR codes
direct mail and social media converge

- Struggling office supply retailers, Office Depot and OfficeMax, are reportedly in merger talks, and may sell off their stores in Mexico to Grupo Gigante for $700 million.

- Alliance Franchise Brands LLC was formed, which now includes the following print-for-pay franchise locations:

Allegra
Insty-Prints
American Speedy
Signs Now
Signs by Tomorrow
Image360
CEO is Mike Marcantonio

- Copier hard drives get bad press again. WTOV, Channel 9 NBC News of Ohio ran a “TARGET9” investigation report on 2/20 informing viewers of the danger of copies of all information copied, printed, scanned or emailed by the copier being stored on the hard drive.

“It’s got lawyers’ information and doctors’ information on it.”
“It’s all got to be taken care of properly.”
“I’m going to have to have them stop copying my information then.”
“It will definitely change the way I see the copy machines.”
It was April, 2010, when Katie Couric ran a report on copier hard drives on her CBS Evening News program that garnered nationwide attention.

- Black Book Rankings releases survey showing some dissatisfaction with EHRs:

17% of practices are considering switching their EHRs by end of 2013
- 80% say EHRs do not meet their needs
- 77% say design was ill-matched to their practice specialty
- 44% say vendor is unresponsive

- Allscripts announced it won a Sunrise EHR contract from Phoenix Children’ Hospital of Arizona.

- Allscripts fending off a number of lawsuits from disgruntled customers:

o 4 physician practices (2 Florida pain clinics, 1 Missouri pain clinic and 1 Alabama family practitioner) became plaintiffs claiming; “an expensive, but defective EHR software product” that is “buggy”
o “The product never worked well, and after 4 years in the face of mounting complaints and market pressures to resolve the issues or provide refunds, Allscripts made the decision to discontinue the marketing and sale of MyWay”
o “The learning curve frankly cost me more than the program because we lost money through our decreased ability to see patients”
o “Allscripts made public, fraudulent statements throughout 2011 about how well the integration of various software programs, including the MyWay software, was proceeding (in meeting meaningful-use requirements) without every acknowledging known problems with the software.”
o “They lied to me to get me to buy the program, and then once we bought it, it didn’t work as promised.”
o “Now they’ve sunset it so it’s never going to work.”
o “Nothing about it was as advertised.”

- AllScripts announced a restructuring to reduce costs:

o 4^th quarter net loss of $24.3 million
o total revenues down to $350.9 million from $388.2 million
o will close 12 offices and 1 warehouse
- § $10 million in employee severance
- § $16 million in relocation expenses
- § $3 million in lease exits

- According to some industry analysts, Cerner and McKesson are considering making their EHR patient data exchange interoperable, in order to better compete against industry juggernaut, Epic.

- IBML announced it won a contract to supply high speed desktop scanners to Baptist Health IDN of South Florida, bundled with ECM from CGI Group.

- The Economist Intelligence Unit released results of study:

o 92.5% of healthcare executives have become more reliant on technology during last 3 years
o 70% believe technology has made their employees more creative
o 35% say a computer error has cost their organization money on at least one occasion in last 6 months
o 36% say that diagnosis of patient conditions is critical area for human intuition to prevail
- § 32% say that development of new treatments and medicines is a critical area for human intuition will prevail
o 5% believe that healthcare professionals should be spending time managing patient records
- § 8% say their time should be spent improving administrative processes
o 65% believe that technology can deliver efficiency gains
o 38% admit that different systems across their organizations are not connected to each other
o 78% acknowledge that technology in isolation delivers little or no value